Liferay

It's only appropriate for there to be an entirely new look for a pair of new products, no?

As I stated at the Liferay European Symposium, Liferay is evolving. We've grown a lot from the small, open source, startup company that we once were years ago. We've forged ahead full steam, brought on a lot of great people, and here we are today: the leading open source portal. 

This refresh represents our next big step forward for this company. If you haven't read about them yet on our new site, let me be the first to inform you that we will have two new offerings going forward: Liferay Portal Enterprise Edition (EE) and Liferay Social Office. Why did I say two and not three? Reason being, the Liferay Portal that you all have grown to love is simply being rebranded as Liferay Portal Standard Edition (SE). The emphasis being: we will not be adding or taking anything away from our Liferay Portal SE. The same great product that many of you have been using under the MIT Open Source License will still be offered as Liferay Portal SE now. 

So what will Liferay Portal EE provide? Exactly what its name implies: Enterprise viability. There are many companies looking to use Liferay that require that our portal be stable, hardened, and continually supported. Liferay Portal EE is our answer to those requests. With the purchase of an Enterprise Subscription and Support contract, you join our Customer Network. Meaning, not only do we push updates to you based on issues that are found by our community, but also based on issues that are found by our customers that are much like you. 

As for Liferay Social Office, this is our own implementation of our core product Liferay Portal that acts as a social collaborative tool for the enterprise. We took the expert knowledge of our core product, and threaded the seams together to make another great out-of-the-box solution for enterprises to use. 

Last of all, I wanted to thank our team (Brian Miller, Bryan Cheung, Alice Cheng, Nate Cavanaugh, Ryan Park, and others) for getting this new site up and running. They put in a lot of hours in order to transform a disjunct collection of ideas into this cohesive website. 

Expect a lot more from this company soon.

Still confused? See our FAQ for more Q & A.

After seeing all the blog activity on Liferay.com as of late, I was looking for something to really reach out and inspire me to write an entry as well. Well, today a fellow froworker (friend and coworker) emailed me the following link to a MySQL blog:

http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/04/30/can-having-information-public-hurt-consulting-business/

Within the blog entry, a particular paragraph stuck out to me:

"We know extensive knowledge is important for complex cases. If we get sore throat (simple problem) we just go to the store and get over counter drug. However if we get red dots on the skin the way we did not see before we would likely go to the doctor to for advice. There are many things which causes such symptoms and special skills is required come with diagnoses. There are surely a lot of information on the Internet which would fit description “red dots on the skin” but special skill is required what you’re dealing with."

That's exactly right. I see this happen so many times where a company tries to save a money by going with a third-party firm. The reality is, however, that by trying to save money in the short-term, companies can potentially hurt themselves in the long-term. Now, that isn't to say that third-party firms can't deliver a successful project. Look at our partners - they work together with us to deploy quality applications. 

There's the adage of "what you pay for is what you get". Sure, you might be able to get a $100/hr rate. But if it takes 1500 hours to complete, wouldn't you have been better off paying $200/hr if it would've only taken 500 hours to complete? Or even, let's assume that it was $100/hr at 1000 hours vs. $200/hr at 500 hours. Cost-wise, they'd be exactly the same. But you'd finish in half the time AND have the reassurance that you're getting quality code from people with the right experience.

The truth is, having written the code ourselves, or at least having the communication channels open to those who did, we can not only diagnose issues that may arise from our product (or customizations), but also have the capability to resolve them. And that only comes with expertise and experience.