The global business landscape is witnessing a massive change as market is driven by speed of response, system performance, real-time and contextual information measured through quantifiable goals. This imposes a huge challenge on organizations that are running on disparate systems, with different levels of integration, multiple databases and mix of centralized and distributed data.
Hence, enterprise wide planning plays a crucial role in order to align individual, departmental and corporate goals. As Portals are evolving into a new era with User Experience Platform (UXP) being the buzzword, the architecture goal should be to standardize a platform that could address functional scenarios around Content Management, Collaboration and Integration. Selecting the right combination of technology that could be infused into the architecture goals becomes a very crucial aspect.
CIGNEX is increasing the value of Liferay Portal adoption to their clients by deploying Integrated Business Ecosystem (IBE) architecture. The idea is of using Liferay as a window to enterprise for employees, partners, and customers by providing access to enterprise systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI), E-Commerce, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) etc.
Liferay as a platform has this strength and also has the tools available and messaging architecture. Liferay’s Business logic is built into Application layer and API (Application Programming Interface) and it uses Open Standards and Web Services. With internal support, portlet catalogs and competent partners Liferay can be integrated with well-known technologies like Alfresco, Salesforce, SAP, Documentum, JasperSoft, Magnolia, Pentaho, Magento, Moodle, SugarCRM and Mule.
Figure 1: Integration and Deployment Options
With ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), Web Service or RESTful Integration CIGNEX has successfully integrated Liferay with various technologies from various domains.
Figure 2: IBE Architecture deployed by CIGNEX
Below is a case scenario on how Liferay Integrated Business Ecosystem taken into a broader perspective
A Global pharmaceutical company wanted their intranet to be an effective internal communication tool. Their expensive proprietary intranet solution lacked CMS capabilities taking huge turnaround time for content updates and poor user interface leading to mismatch with their portal goals. Understanding these challenges CIGNEX recommended Liferay platform as the lean architecture can effectively address the current problems. Over the few months CIGNEX solution developed multiple instances over single stack which included Collaboration Portal (Social Office Stack), Healthcare professional portal, Healthcare Decision Makers Portal, Knowledge Management Portal, Medical Information Content Management Portal and Salesforce Content Download Portal as external Stack. An Intranet and Employee Development Portal was developed for internal stack.
The new solution was very easy to use and soon gained wider acceptance among employees. Single Sign On (SSO), easier navigation, Business Unit specific Content Management and Web 2.0 features were a few notable highlights. Integration with SAP and EMC Documentum once again reinforced the architecture strength of Liferay as a platform.
The Integrated Enterprise Platform enabled client in getting their business in control. Client was able to save upto 50% costs over alternative solutions and over 70% reductions in infrastructure costs for roll-out. Meanwhile, client had about 150-160 reusable components/portlets within their solution.
