Liferay and Drupal Comparison

@shubhamnagar
Director – InfoAxon Technologies
INDIA’s FIRST Open source Integration Company
1
Portal vs CMS – Often a
Source of confusion

2
 What is a Portal? What is a CMS ?

Focuses on content and A content management

application delivery system and not a content
delivery system
Delivers personalized or
customized content to users Has administration of users
who author content
Manages access to content Manage and audit the
and applications (SSO) publication of content
Contextualizes and frames
large content sets

3
Liferay is a Open Source Horizontal Portal and CMS
Platform with rich enterprise stability and capabilities

Drupal is only an Open Source CMS

Platform NOT a Portal or anything else
4
What is Drupal?
• Drupal is an open source content management platform
• PHP Based
• GPL License

What is Liferay ?
• Liferay Portal is an open source enterprise portal platform easily
integrated with available frameworks (also open source)
• Liferay Portal is integrated with Liferay CMS, a built-in content
management system and a wide collection of collaboration tools – all
available in one download
• Java based
• MIT License

Summary *Both Drupal and Liferay offer add-ons that provide functionality as additional downloadable
modules. In Drupal you need to know where and what to pick. No support from Drupal
directly

• Drupal = CMS*
• Liferay = Portal + CMS + Collaboration Tools + Enterprise Support +
Social + Document Management + Workflow all in one pack
5
 For the fifth year,
independent leading
research firm Gartner
has named Liferay a
Leader in the Magic
Quadrant for
Horizontal Portals.

Drupal is considered
more a niche player

6
The portal and CMS markets are converging/evolving
into the larger knowledge worker productivity
software market with digital engagement across
customers, partners and employees giving birth to
new business models

Top spending priorities are:

• Portals and portal frameworks
• Content and document management systems
• Navigation, search, and retrieval (NSR)
• Collaboration
• Digital Engagement

Liferay has always been evolving toward integrated

portal, CMS, NSR, Social, Multi Site and collaboration
functionality
7
Only enterprise portals easily encompass all other
functional areas in the knowledge management, digital
engagement and content targeting market.

Advantages of Portal against CMS, NSR, Collaboration

• LDAP integration and enterprise taxonomy concepts
• Customizable and robust authentication pipeline
• Portal integration framework can envelop any CMS, blog,
Wiki
• Standalone Wiki or blog is a commodity; portal-enabled
wikis/blogs with community scoping adds greater value
• Portal offers standardized and generic integration through
Web services, REST, ESB, etc.
• Navigation, search, retrieval works across enterprise
applications and content sources
8
Drupal Professional Support
• Support provided by third party consulting companies
• Highest SLA (unknown)

Liferay Professional Support

• Support provided directly by Liferay, Inc., creators of Liferay
Portal
• Highest SLA – 24/7 business critical phone support with one
hour response time provided directly from Liferay engineer

9
10
11
12
Much more
development required
on Drupal for User
Stories than Liferay

13
 Liferay Gives Drupal Gives
A comprehensive group wide platform Only a Content Management framework;
with multi-site ability to host all kinds of Rest of Portal interfaces will need to be
Group sites with no further investment developed from scratch

Document Management reusable with Lot of plumbing of components is

CIMR and other projects; Hundreds of required for achieving business use cases;
pre-packaged Add-ons; Alternative to Absence of Workflow and repository for
Magento and Storefronts which have to integrate Alfresco and
other BPM engines
Deliver LDAP and Single Sign on across
enterprise ; User Management Significant work and knowledge required
configurations ; More configurations and in choosing multiple Add-ons and paid
lesser development or free support per component

Enterprise Business level SLAs and Unstructured SLA and community

Support vital for high business impact support unless it is from local vendors
brand initiatives and new ventures (very few credible vendors in India)

14
Liferay is a much evolved Product with support for a very
wide variety of platforms and operating systems all within
an enterprise support umbrella 15
 You can create a lot with Liferay
Horizontal Portal Platform to Develop “Exceptional Digital Experiences” and
Manage Content

Enterprise “Container”
Application for Web
Employee
Integration platform
Intranet &
Platform and diverse
Extranet
Simple Web
Platform experiences
Site with
Extended such as BI
CMS and
Online Enterprise Dashboards
Collaboration
Community Marketplaces Service , Big Data
Centric Social Platforms portals
Micro Sites Network Platform

100’s of “Free
Extensive Rich
Application
Open Integration Rich Security
Open Source Portlets” to
Standards and Web UI Features
build Web
Support Support
Experience 16
 What is Liferay?

Liferay is a platform that provides the

capabilities and tools to build compelling
audience engagement experiences and
manage content for the enterprise.
 Product Ecosystem
Leading provider of commercial open source
portal and social collaboration software –
With One Subscription you get
Liferay can be used for various purposes and the return of
investment for Liferay for customers is huge by using the same
Platform as Digital Engagement Tool, Content Management
System, Document Management , Intranet/Extranet,
Transactional System and a lot more possibilities………….
How you can use the Liferay Platform
extensively to Accelerate Digital
Transformation

19
Red and White Blendcraft Pan Vilas
Chakranomics

Muskaan

We have already launched several digital

experiences till date using Liferay
20
Time to Take Off accelerating
unused and underutilized
capabilities in Liferay
21
Understanding How to Accelerate
Digital Transformation

22
Setup Digital Governance using Multi Site
Environment
Create Organizational
Information Architecture
for Entire Group
including sub
organizations for a clear
Roadmap for present
and Future Digital
Experiences

23
 Global Context
(Apps, Templates,
Sites)

Business Division
App Repository
Corporate Sites

Corporate Corporate

IBD
Extend
Brand Initiative
Reuse Present Productivity
Sites
CSR Sites

Architecture to
Host Group Wide
Red and White
Intranet Muskaan
(Chakranomics)

Digital Properties
with “Mobile First”
Knowledge
Blend Craft Bravery Awards
Management

Approach
Analytical Data
Presentation
Pan Vilas Extend

Others

24
Enable Multi-Channel Delivery of Content and Reused Apps

ERP Web
Html
PDF
Excel

Mobile
Mobile Web
CRM Native
Hybrid

Printer
FAX
ECM & WCM Portal

Data &
Systems
 Use CMS Capabilities with Multilingual
For e.g. Nepal and other territories
Content

Versioning Workflow

Location &
Language Categories
and Tags

Related Assets
Use 100’s of Free Liferay Marketplace Apps to extend functionality
across all Digital Experiences;

Make Group wide App repository using the same approach 27

Digital Content Management Features
Web Content
Publishing
Unified Documents and
Digital Media
User Defined Content
Digital Categories

Content Asset Publisher

Coming Rich Text Editors

Alive Web Content
Structures & Templates
28
Digital Content Management Features
Intelligent Digital
Content Search
Integration with MS
Office
One Click Page
Creation
Digital User Driven Workflow
and Approval
Content Live Content Editing

Coming & Scheduling

Virtual Hosting &
Alive Vanity URLs
Dynamic Content
Tagging
29
Create Staging to Live CMS Governance
Publishing Content in a
structured governance manner

Publication
Status

Summary of
Changes

Redesigned
Staging Bar
Lets try not to design the user experience but the overall
“Digital Engagement Product” that creates the experience

Use Persona Based approach for Business to Consumer

Digital Experiences by targeting Content and Apps based on
User Persona

31
Deliver Personalized User Experiences
Content Targeting and Personalization

User Segments

Suggested Content

Analytics

Available as plugin for

6.2
Use easy to use Configuration rules to Target Content based
on User Personas identified as part of Product Development
33
Leverage Mobile SDK to Build Mobile apps very quickly
Building Native Applications
2
Liferay Liferay
Developer Mobile 1
Studio SDK

Standard & Custom

Service Discovery
Allows developers to
use Services in native 3
apps
Contacts, Camera, Blogs, Docs,
etc. Custom
Liferay APIs
Native App

Services

Liferay Instance

4
Location, etc.
iOS APIs
What capabilities
will Business
Acquire once
Digital
Transformation
is Accelerated

35
Capabilities Acquired by Business through
Accelerated Transformation
New Business Model Creation through opening New
channels of delivery and customer services
Significant Increase in Reusable Features
Quicker and Consistent Brand launches and messaging
changes
Real Time understanding of Personas and Customers
Structured Governance and Digital Roadmap
Content Management and Mobile First driven Digital
Standards
Marketplace of published Apps from Multiple vendors

36