When will Sun acquire Liferay ?

Posted on 2008-05-08 07:38:00.0 by noreply@blogger.com (Julien Viet) [ View original post ]

I have been told last night about that announcement : In a few words, Sun and Liferay are collaborating on a common set of components that will be reused by both platforms.

To me it's a perfect admission of two facts: Liferay failed at implement new technologies such as JSR286 and Sun failed at creating an ubiquitous and visible version of their portal.

Liferay benefits from Sun technologies that they were not able to implement due to the huge legacy of their code base. Brian admitted it publicly in a post ("we are not smart enough, we don't have enough man power, and we don't have enough energy to build an innovative product").

Sun on its side distributes a rebranded version of Liferay and kills its existing portal. Why ? Sun open portal is too tied to the operational environment and their identity management product (read here big fat momma). Sun realized that they wouldn't be able to increasing their product visibility while making it more adaptable to more diverse environments.

The real question on everyone's mind though is: why is Sun moving in this direction now? in my opinion most of the benefit goes to Liferay, so the hypothesis that Sun could acquire Liferay seems very valid to me even if the announcement claims it won't happen ("No, there are no plans for an acquisition.") and Sun does not yet have vested interests in Liferay. We can see this as a last attempt from Sun to revitalize their portal offering by trying to quickly leverage Liferay's community. Will this work for either side of this partnership? Only time will tell...


At least I am not wondering anymore about why our proposals submitted to JavaOne have been refused :-)

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