Rapid Microsite Deployment Platform

Background

Our client is a leading global business media company. Launched in 2007, our client has an impressive programme of over 100 events covering Health & Safety, IT, Agriculture, Aviation, Property, Food Ingredients, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical Ingredients, Entertainment Technology, Security, Construction, Architecture, Licensed Trade, Music and Travel markets.

Why Surya?

With more than 30 implementations of Liferay to date, Surya was engaged by our client to provide a roadmap for migration of their existing sites from various platforms to Liferay. Surya proposed a unique solution that helped our client in launching sites using a tool instead of building them from scratch. The solution helped the client IT team gather enough confidence that the business was wishing to adopt our solution faster that IT could keep up.

Challenges

The client had already implemented some form of solution using Liferay and they were not impressed with the solution to an extent that the business was reluctant to migrate to Liferay. It was largely due to bad solution design and non-standard customizations to fit the solution. The existing sites were managed using multiple solutions including but not limited to Drupal, Plone, ATG Dynamo, SharePoint etc. Each had its own unique usability and user group.

Thus building a solution that catered to a diverse user group that was used to a style of web content management was a difficult task. Added to the usability was thechallenge of quick launch times. From the request to launch there was usually a few weeks window to build the site and verify it with all the analytics integration.

“The business was reluctant to talk about migration to Liferay due to previous bad experiences, but Surya helped us restore the business confidence to such an extent that now IT having trouble keeping up with the new requests to migrate”

– Head of IT

Surya Solution Approach

Surya proposed a simple solution that allowed the event & conference site managers to launch sites in days as against weeks. The solution was capable of allowing users to manage the sites over time through a single portlet that improved the usability & learning cycle. Surya developed administration portlets that utilized Liferay Services API to create communities dynamically and hard wired the appropriate portlets to the pages on the fly with default content being added into the repository. Thus building the sites was a matter of filling in a form with tabs for content, banners, rolling ticker & calendar. This enabled quick learning cycle for all kinds of users and easy launch of the sites using single window. We offered maintenance of the site through the same portlet that allowed for ease of use when it comes to updating the site.

The solution is now being used to migrate 100+ sites to Liferay.

Business Case:

  • Multiple Web Technologies
  • Different Processes & Skills
  • Varying time to market
  • Consolidation not possible
  • Web sites managed by vendors
  • A predictable system needed

Solution Features:

  • Single Liferay Instance
  • Clustered Deployment for load
  • Admin portlet to manage sites
  • Special portlets for: People Directory Chat with Organizers Booking Forms Payment Integration Reports

Business Benefits:

  • An Engine to launch Event Sites
  • Shortest time to market
  • Minimal web developer work
  • Shortest time to market
  • Manage content & media centrally
  • Single hosting solution for all