New Orleans, La. – Despite initially being forced into learning Liferay’s digital experience software solution, Veriday’s CEO Marc Lamoureux says Liferay has a high potential to grow its services in Canada because there is a growing marketplace for it.
Lamoureux said during an interview on Oct. 9 during the Liferay Symposium North America in New Orleans, that his company, part of a new breed of systems integrators, helps clients with their journey of digital transformation and helps companies create more inspiring experiences with their employees and with customers, so the decision to use Liferay was a no-brainer.
Veriday has about 10 – 12 core North American clients was first made familiar with Liferay’s products back in 2006 while working with Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, a rehab hospital based in Toronto.
“They were implementing new hospital management systems, and the CIO and management team were interested in extending the value of that platform out to employees and to improve productivity,” Lamoureux said.
“Things like enterprise reporting, understanding new accounting systems, process managing other workflows that needed to be driven not necessarily from a core platform, but as an extension to the platform.”
Veriday is a technology company based in Toronto and primarily uses Liferay technology solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Liferay, a California-based company makes software that helps companies create digital experiences on the web, mobile and connected devices. Its clients include Airbus, Allianz, Autozone, Bosch, Domino’s, T-Mobile, and York University.
Lamoureux explained that Veriday initially helped build the hospital’s platform on Novell that had a portal platform, however shortly after it was built, Novell delisted their platform and recommended Veriday and other customers to migrate to Liferay, which had a similar platform at the time.
“It was very similar technology platform. We met Liferay at Novell’s annual conference in 2006 and at that point I think they were only under 20 people. The technology was great, we like the people a lot and we were forced into learning Liferay for that product, but as time went on we realized there were other industry compatibilities.
“Liferay was a similar technology strategy to large more expensive platforms like IBM WebSphere and Oracle’s platforms and so our corporate strategy was we could grow our business by learning Liferay’s platform and in a way that wouldn’t be too expensive for us to operate. As it turns out the fortunate side of things was we can actually deliver super high-value for customers because there was a low expensive platform,” Lamoureux said.
Canada’s digital experience portals market is growing
Lameroux said there definitely was a market because there are similar products to Liferay already in Canada. He noted that there is some adoption of the type of solution in Montreal, “which has been a hotbed for investment for Liferay” and also in Toronto where there is a handful of companies investing in Liferay and “spending millions of dollars a year on building out through Liferay.”
Though the gap in breaking the market as the number one, and go-to product, according to Lamoureux, remains around awareness.
He added that Liferay needs to get out there more because “the more enterprises that discover Liferay and see how much functionality there is particularly because of the price, I think adoption is going to grow for sure in Canada.”
