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Silwatech is backed by a team of 1000+ employees, serving clients in over 10+ industries across 9+ locations
Enterprise Digital Customs Platform Modernization for a Leading UAE Government Authority
Client Type: Federal-Level Government Authority
Region: United Arab Emirates (Middle East)
Sector: Government / Trade Regulation & Border Control
Organization Type: Large-Scale Public Sector Institution
The client is a major UAE government authority responsible for regulating and facilitating cross-border trade across one of the country’s most critical economic gateways. The organization plays a strategic role in safeguarding national borders, enforcing customs regulations, and supporting the UAE’s economic diversification and global trade objectives.
As part of its long-term digital transformation agenda, the authority continues to invest in modernization initiatives to improve service delivery, transparency, system reliability, and the stakeholder experience through enterprise-grade digital platforms.
Business Challenge
The organization operated a mission-critical digital portal built on an older version of Liferay, which had become increasingly difficult to maintain and scale. The platform was central to customs operations and stakeholder interactions, making stability, security, and continuity non-negotiable.
Key challenges included:
Legacy platform running on Liferay 7.2 with deprecated APIs
Over 12 custom modules are incompatible with modern OSGi standards
Static themes and templates are limiting responsiveness and UI flexibility
Manual deployment processes with no rollback or version control
Performance bottlenecks in clustered, multi-instance environments
Need to modernize without downtime or service disruption
Case Study Topics
Project Overview
The project focused on migrating the existing digital customs portal from Liferay 7.2 to Liferay DXP 7.4 Enterprise Edition, ensuring improved performance, scalability, security, and long-term maintainability.
The migration involved:
- Transitioning to OSGi-based modular architecture
- Adopting Clay UI and modern design standards
- Refactoring all custom modules and integrations
- Enhancing multilingual (Arabic–English) content management
- Strengthening authentication, authorization, and system security
The modernization established a future-ready digital foundation for advanced services and analytics-driven capabilities.
Scope of Work
SilwaTech executed end-to-end platform modernization covering:
Platform Upgrade
- Migrated from Liferay 7.2 to Liferay DXP 7.4
- Preserved all data, configurations, and business logic
Custom Module Refactoring
- Refactored 15+ custom modules (portlets, hooks, REST APIs)
- Ensured full compliance with Liferay 7.4 OSGi standards
Theme & Template Migration
- Migrated themes, layout templates, display pages, and widgets
- Adopted Clay UI and Lexicon design standards
Content & Metadata Migration
- Implemented validated ETL pipelines
- Migrated structured content, metadata, and multilingual assets (Arabic–English)
Associated Service Upgrades
- Enhanced media repository integrations
- Optimized Elasticsearch search capabilities
Testing & Validation
- Conducted infrastructure, integration, application, and UAT testing
- Validated across all environments
Deployment & Post-Go-Live Support
- Executed phased deployment with rollback strategy
- Provided post-Go-Live monitoring and stabilization
Solution Approach
A structured, phased methodology ensured safe and predictable delivery:
Assessment & Planning
- Audited modules, integrations, and dependencies
- Identified deprecated APIs and modernization priorities
Development & Refactoring
- Rebuilt legacy components using Liferay 7.4 OSGi framework
- Implemented Clay UI for accessibility and consistency
Content & Asset Migration
- Automated migration of content, metadata, and documents
- Ensured Arabic–English parity and synchronization
Infrastructure Optimization
- Tuned Elasticsearch indexing and caching
- Optimized clustered and multi-instance performance
Security & Authentication
- Integrated OAuth2 and UAE PASS
- Strengthened LDAP synchronization and access control
Quality Assurance & Rollout
- Conducted regression, load, and integration testing
- Executed seamless Go-Live with continuous monitoring
Key Challenges Addressed
Absence of Source Code for Legacy Modules (Major Challenge)
A critical challenge was the lack of source code for existing custom modules, which were available only as deployed JAR and WAR binaries.
SilwaTech:
- Reverse-engineered each module
- Analyzed class structures, dependencies, and service logic
- Rebuilt fully compliant Liferay 7.4 OSGi modules
- Conducted extensive regression testing to ensure functional parity
Additional challenges included:
- Large-scale multilingual content migration with zero data loss
- Refactoring 50+ interlinked components
- Preserving Elasticsearch index integrity
- Achieving zero downtime during migration
- Meeting enhanced Liferay 7.4 security and modularization standards
Outcome & Impact
The modernization delivered a robust, scalable, and high-performing digital platform, achieving:
- 35% improvement in page response and content load times
- Streamlined multilingual content management workflows
- Improved user experience through responsive Clay-based UI
- Strengthened authentication and role-based access control
- Simplified maintenance through modular OSGi architecture
- Enhanced reliability across clustered environments
Applied Technologies
- Liferay DXP 7.4 Q4.0 Enterprise Edition
- Java 11 + OSGi Framework
- PostgreSQL Database
- Clay UI & Tailwind CSS (Lexicon Design)
- Elasticsearch
- OAuth2, UAE PASS, LDAP
- Enterprise CI/CD & Deployment Pipelines
Why SilwaTech
SilwaTech was selected for its deep expertise in Liferay DXP migrations and experience delivering high-risk, large-scale government platform modernizations.
Proven capability in Liferay 7.x to 7.4 enterprise migrations
Strong understanding of OSGi modular architecture
Experience working with government security, compliance, and identity systems
Ability to modernize platforms without disrupting live operations
Structured delivery model backed by a skilled India-based engineering team
Planning a Large-Scale Government Platform Migration?
SilwaTech helps government authorities modernize mission-critical digital platforms with zero downtime, enterprise security, and long-term scalability.
Contact Us
Contact us for any questions, support, or business inquiries.
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