Three Chief Pillars of Our Success in Liferay: Experience, Expertise, and Community Embedment

Since 2010, we have been training, coaching and accompanying a range of enterprises and organizations in their digital transformation based on Liferay Portal solutions. Having received a number of awards and observed the rising success of our clients, today, we have unreserved confidence in what we can offer and how we can actually transform an organization through Liferay technology. In retrospect, we believe our successful performance rests upon three chief pillars (Figure 1):

1. Our longtime experience accumulated through working on different projects,
2. Our expertise rooted in our engineers’ know-how of Liferay, in particular, and open source technologies in general, and
3. Our engineer-to-engineer relationship building capability which has placed us firmly embedded in Liferay expert community.

Figure 1. Successful Liferay Implementation

Experience and Expertise: Managing the Paradox of Catch-22 Situation

When it comes to deploying Liferay Portal in an organization’s hybrid information system, two main factors: experience and expertise, play a significant role. Experience is mainly built through having years of hands-on approach to deploying Liferay on different IS platforms in a myriad of service and manufacturing industries. Expertise, on the other hand, is a matter of accessing, creating, and accumulating abstract knowledge and know-how on the related technology fields. The paradox – the catch-22 situation – therefore is, the two feed on one another. Without expertise, a team cannot deliver on project promises and obtain an enriching experience, and without actually engaging in high impact projects one cannot gain solid expertise. Learning from mistakes, learning to tackle new problems, learning to understand new business models and forecasting needs, all translate into the indispensable interdependence between experience and expertise.

At Savoir-faire Linux, the team of enterprise solutions, which is responsible for Liferay-based projects, comprises 20 highly experienced open source software consultants half of them are Liferay certified. This means that they have successfully completed Liferay training programs and passed the certifying exams. Although Liferay expertise/experience is a necessary condition to successfully complete a Liferay project, it is not sufficient. Java experience/expertise is the complementary piece. For this critical reason, we have hired, trained, nurtured, and empowered a number of experienced Java developers who know about ‘ins and outs’ of Java; namely, technical specifications, philosophy, and ecosystem.

Liferay Community: A Place for Sharing Knowledge and Experience

Liferay community comprises the following: Liferay Projects, Community Projects, Community Feature Ideas, Releases, Forums, Blogs, Wiki, User Groups, Special Activities, Upcoming Events. Each of these elements is a window to countless opportunities for developers, users, researchers and enthusiasts to engage in a meaningful conversation leading to a helpful take-away such as experience, learning, know-how, or even social capital (See Picture 1). Wining five Community Excellence Awards has been a source of pride and gratitude for us since this is a testimony to our community embedment and collaborative software R&D.

Picture 1. An Illustration of Liferay Community Knowledge and Experience Exchanges

At Savoir-faire Linux, we make sure our Liferay experts (Click here to read an example) stay connected, deeply engaged, and collaborate on online open source platforms. In fact, it is one of our core beliefs that optimal software development process depends on open scientific knowledge sharing practices, as embodied in Open Source Initiative’s definition of OS and Debian Social Contract. We also believe, we have the moral obligation to hold ourselves accountable and give back to OS communities, the same way we receive from them. Another example would be the Liferay Montreal User Group which has been a successful initiative to bring developers, clients, and users together to exchange ideas and discuss future road maps.

Picture 2. Map and Logo of the Liferay Montreal User Group Source: https://web.liferay.com/community/user-groups/montreal/welcome

Experience, Expertise, and Community Embedment… So What?

Synergy or exponential knowledge growth is an invaluable gain in open source ecosystem. The real magic happens when you have a team of engineers who know what to do, who have done it a couple of times, and when faced with the unknown, they know how to figure it out and find the missing pieces and/or co-create them in collaboration with other gurus. In business world and organizational context, the synergy of the three pillars within open source software ecosystem leads to several benefits:

1. business need is met through digital transformation,
2. End users are satisfied because there is a value-added innovative service to enjoy,
3. Development costs reduce while margins increase.

Not long ago, we have completed an award winning project called HuGo for Humania Assurance. HuGo Platform has won two prestigious national and provincial recognition: Digital Transformation Award, and SME Grand Prize OCTAS 2017 Lauréat (Picture 3).

Picture 3. Awards Won by HuGo Platform Using Liferay Portal Technology

These awards are tangible artifacts that showcase abstract elements underpinning a successful case of digital transformation. The dedication of top management of Humania Assurance, the expertise, experience and community efforts of Savoir-faire Linux, as well as the accumulated know-how on open source technologies over the past decades collectively create a synergistic and pronounced result. Bottom line is easy to read. The client’s brand name strengthens as an innovative SME in insurance industry. Their end users – the source of revenue generation – enjoy seamlessly a creative service/product which facilitates their insurance policy applications painstakingly, rapidly, and easily. Savoir-faire Linux gains yet another piece of experience, circulates the expertise in-house, and solidify its commitment to progressing Liferay community platform. (read the Case Study)

Shaping the Future Ensemble

We foresee three ways to better shape the future of Liferay based digital transformation. First, we invite enthusiasts to join our Liferay Montreal User Group and participate in the events. We want you to be heard, and to this end, we organize events and invite speakers like Raymond Augé, Senior Software Architect at Liferay (@rotty3000) to make sure you receive quality responses to your queries. Second, contact us and let us know about your specific expertise and experiences. We would love to have you on our team. Third, we are currently inviting new ideas to realize in collaboration with Liferay community, you may want to consider helping us push Liferay technological boundaries forward.