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Migrating to Liferay DXP from WebSphere Portal™ or HCL DX™
I was recently asked whether it is possible to migrate from HCL DX™ to Liferay DXP. I think the expected response was "no", because they seemed shocked when I said it was possible.
Let's ride along with Mr. Peabody and Sherman in the Wayback Machine to review some history and understand why migration is possible...
WebSphere Portal™ was a product created by IBM and initially released for AIX in July, 2001.
For what it's worth, IBM is a member of the JCP Expert Groups behind all three versions of the Portlet specifications, Portlet 1.0 (JSR-168), Portlet 2.0 (JSR-286) and the most recent Portlet 3.0 (JSR-362), as was Oracle, SAP and Liferay.
WebSphere Portal™ was IBM's implementation of a portlet container, and they used their experience and knowledge to drive the development of the Portlet 1.0 specification. IBM released WebSphere Portal™ 1.2 in 2001, over two years before the final publication of the Portlet 1.0 specification in October, 2003.
Likewise, IBM continued development and release of WebSphere Portal™, releasing version 6.1 in July, 2008, a month after the publication of the Portlet 2.0 specification in June, 2008.
The work they were doing on their product helped to feed the development of the Portlet specifications.
Interestingly, although IBM continued developing WebSphere Portal™ and also contributing to the release of the Portlet 3.0 specification published in April, 2017, I couldn't find any confirmation that WebSphere Portal™ was ever updated to be Portlet 3.0 compliant. I could only find confirmation that WebSphere Portal™ was compliant with the Portlet 1.0 and Portlet 2.0 specifications. For example, if you browse https://help.hcltechsw.com/digital-experience/8.5/dev-portlet/wpsbpc.html you'll find that the 1.0 and 2.0 specs are called out as supported, but no mention of the 3.0 spec. This could mean it is supported but just didn't make it into the doco, or it could mean that it isn't compliant to the 3.0 spec.
IBM continued WebSphere Portal™ development, releasing version 9.0 in December, 2016 and surely this influenced their participation in the Portlet 3.0 specification, even if it might not become an official part of the product.
The last stop on our time trip is to the end of 2018 when IBM announced the sale of WebSphere Portal™ and other software to HCL Technologies. Since that transition, WebSphere Portal™ has been rebranded as HCL Digital Experience™, the 9.5 version was released, and other platform enhancements have been introduced.
Migration from HCL DX™ (formerly WebSphere Portal™) or older versions of IBM WebSphere Portal™ to Liferay DXP is still possible because both platforms still have strong Portlet Specification foundations and compliance.
WebSphere Portal™ and Liferay Portal both were portlet containers first, and over time both platforms were enhanced to include digital experience capabilities. While those capabilities are implemented differently on each platform, the capabilities that an implementation on HCL DX™ uses will be available in some form on Liferay DXP.
These facts ensure that migration is possible...
So, say we wanted to migrate onto Liferay DXP, how would we approach this?
Well, first I would recommend teaming up with a Liferay Partner or Liferay Global Services; as the experts in Liferay DXP, the cost, effort and time required to complete the migration will be much shorter than trying to complete a migration on your own or with a consulting firm that are not Liferay experts. The combination of your expertise in your implementation combined with the Liferay expertise from a Partner or Liferay GS will accelerate the migration effort.
Migration will then involve analyzing what the HCL DX™ environment contains and finding the right path to move to Liferay DXP.
For example, custom portlets, whether implemented using JSP, Struts, Spring or JSF, these would require some repackaging for Liferay deployment, and depending upon whether the portlets are clean JSR-168/JSR-286 or whether they leverage WebSphere Portal™ or HCL DX™ APIs, there may need to be some rework necessary to get them to Liferay, but even the worst case is going to be easier to migrate from one portal to another than it will be to do a total rewrite...
If you have solutions based upon the HCL Script Application™, Liferay DXP supports running JS applications using all of the popular frameworks. Again there may need to be some repackaging to get your applications on Liferay DXP, but there's still a path forward that will not require rewriting your applications.
For the environment, Liferay DXP supports a wide range of SSO solutions, so you'll likely be able to leverage the same SSO. Liferay is based upon Java, so many of your existing team can transition to developing for Liferay with some Liferay-specific training.
For your pages and content, well that will take some effort to rebuild those in Liferay DXP, but Liferay has great facilities for creating pages and contents. They may be new ways of doing things compared to HCL DX™, but they are easy to learn and use.
Migrating from HCL DX™ to Liferay DXP is possible.
But you don't have to take my word for it, here's some further reading that support the same arguments:
For more on the history of WebSphere Portal™ and HCL DX™, check the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSphere_Portal
And, of course, if you have any questions or comments, drop me a message below or hit me up on the Liferay community Slack channel!
