During the LNLUG (Liferay Netherlands User Group) meeting of 28th of march 2013 Firelay's Product Manager Wieteke den Uijl presented about Firelay - a Liferay Managed Hosting platform (at that time in development), about the challenges during the development of this platform and the platform itself.

1. The development of a Liferay Managed Hosting platform
Wieteke den Uijl

2. Contents
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About me
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What is Firelay?
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Why Firelay?
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The Challenge
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So how does it work?
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The “Managed” in Managed Hosting
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How to start?
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And now?
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

3. About me
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Industrial Design Engineering
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Consultant/trainer at Proteon
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Involved with Liferay since 3 years
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One of the founders of LNLUG
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Dutch Translation Liferay
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Liferay BugSquad
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Product Manager Firelay
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

4. What is Firelay?
High Performance and Affordable Fuel for
Liferay Enterprise Portal Solutions
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

5. What is Firelay
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Standardized hosted Liferay services
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Currently Liferay LCE Patchers version
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Future Liferay Enterprise Edition
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Customer can customize Liferay portal
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Firelay takes care of the rest:
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Monitoring
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Security updates & patches
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Backup
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Optimization
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And more...
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

6. Why Firelay?
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Gap between Liferay CE and EE
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Managed hosting ≠ core business for integrators
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Mainly care during development, not in live
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Security becomes more and more important
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Liferay keeps on growing
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

7. The challenge
Managed hosting Development
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Stability ●
Flexibility
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Continuity ●
Agile
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Minimum of changes ●
Continuous change
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Standardization ●
Often one-off
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Automation ●
Customer specific
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Procedures ●
Access on all levels
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Limitation of access
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One fits all
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

8. So how does it work?
Firelay Website: Customer portal: Manage Firelay:
Ordering, Ordering, Detailed info,
Information Support, Restarts,
Feedback, Virtual hosts,
Manage Firelays Portal properties,
Restore backup,
Releases, Logs, etc.
Firelay Liferay Portal: FIS:
Portal Administrator Business process,
Main hub for information,
Manages provisioning system
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

9. The “Managed” in managed hosting
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Set up Firelay Liferay automatically
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Standardized Configuration → always the same
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For Operating System up to and including the Liferay:
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Availability monitoring and follow-up
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Capacity monitorying and follow-up
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Security updates and patches
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24x7x365 Support
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Backups and restore
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Optimized caching
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

10. How to start? Features
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Identify Stakeholders and influence
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Identify Components
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Identify Goal
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Interview possible customers
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Interview other users
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Interview other stakeholders
→ Product Backlog with prioritized list of features
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

11. How to start? Scrum
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Agile – Scrum
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Lots, lots, lots of brainstorming or grooming
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Architecture
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Dependencies
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Features
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Procedures
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Vague ideas → Epics → User stories
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Sprints with both front-end and infrastructure work
Keep balance the balance!
Don't loose track of the goal
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

12. And now?
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Alpha testing with select group of users
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Beta testing with larger group
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Launch and open to all
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Keep gathering feedback
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Keep improving based on feedback
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY

13. https://www.firelay.com/
info@firelay.com
Twitter: @firelay
Fireblog: Behind the scenes
https://www.firelay.com/about-firelay/fireblog/
Wieteke den Uijl
wieteke@firelay.com
+31 (0) 15 268 25 57
Twitter: @wieteke15
WWW.LIFERAY.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LIFERAY @LIFERAY