Liferay Announces Structural Changes in Support of Its Cloud and Channel Strategies

LOS ANGELES, CA – (December 13, 2023) –  Liferay today announced changes to its organizational structure in support of its ongoing strategy to become the best cloud platform for building custom enterprise solutions. These solutions are designed and delivered by its network of partners, which serve Liferay’s 1200+ customers based in 70+ countries. 

The structural change impacts three major areas: 

• Professional Services: the company is reorienting its Global Services division to do fewer independent implementations in favor of supporting and augmenting partner-led implementations. Partners already deliver over 60% of customer solutions, with the proportion expected to increase to 95% in the next five years. 
• Customer Experience: Liferay is streamlining its support, success, and cloud operations teams to provide even faster, more proactive issue resolution and production management services designed for the cloud era. Over 35% of new Liferay customers are using Liferay’s PaaS and SaaS offerings, relying on Liferay not only to provide break-fix software support, but to ensure scalability, security, and data protection.  
• Product Delivery: the company is pushing to exceed quality standards, especially as demanded for SaaS business models, by adopting a “QA Culture” mindset. This approach designs quality into the product delivery process, both within product management-defined requirements and the engineering and code review processes. 

These changes will result in additional investments in key teams and business areas, but will also lead to some rightsizing of other teams. Liferay has worked to ensure that support services and project implementations will continue uninterrupted during this transition. 

“Our departing team members have made immeasurable contributions to growing Liferay into a global, 9-figure-ARR subscription software company,” said Brian Chan, the company’s founder and CEO. “We are so grateful for everyone who has been part of our journey, even as we are excited to see how these strategic changes will allow for further investments into our cloud future, amplified by our partners.”

Affected employees exiting the company have been offered financial and career assistance for their transition, with some having the option to take other positions within the company. Those with technical experience also have the option to participate in a reverse recruitment program with Liferay’s partner network. 
“We have amazing talent that will be a huge asset to other companies in the market, especially those in the Liferay ecosystem,” said Matt Poladian, Chief People Officer. “We will do our very best to provide a smooth transition for our people, who contributed greatly to the success of Liferay.” 
These changes come at a time of continued growth at Liferay. Liferay introduced its Liferay PaaS offering in 2019 and Liferay SaaS in 2022, and has enjoyed 36% ARR growth rates and 94% gross retention rates for its cloud business.