UZ Brussel takes a digital leap forward with scalable SaaS solution

ACA Group migrates over 150 websites to Liferay SaaS-platform

UZ Brussel is a university hospital with a strong reputation in patient care, education, and research. For the necessary upgrade and migration of their existing digital platform, they turned to ACA Group.

The transition from the latest version of Liferay DXP not only brought technical improvements but also laid the foundation for a more secure and efficient digital infrastructure. ACA played a key role in migrating over 150 sites from UZ Brussel’s on-premise environment to the Liferay SaaS platform. Read the full story below.

The challenge: manual migration of 150+ websites

UZ Brussel’s existing websites were running on Liferay 7.0 in an on-premise environment. Since Liferay 7.0 was no longer supported, the upgrade was essential to meet the latest standards and security requirements. ACA Group recommended moving directly to the Liferay SaaS platform as part of the upgrade, providing a cost-effective and future-proof solution.
The project's scale was the biggest challenge: over 150 websites had to be migrated to the new SaaS platform. A simple database export-import was not an option, meaning the migration had to be done entirely manually.

“It was quite a challenging task”, says Roque Fernandez, project manager at ACA Group. “We couldn’t just use scripts. We had to rely on the Liferay export/import tool and make numerous manual adjustments.”

ACA partners with Liferay for a seamless migration

The project consisted of two main parts:

1. Upgrade to latest Liferay DXP: This was completed relatively quickly, giving UZ Brussel access to the latest features and improvements of the Liferay platform.
2. Migration to Liferay SaaS: ACA received support from Liferay Solution Engineers for the migration. Three major sites were migrated first as test cases to identify key challenges. The rest of the migration was done manually, using Liferay’s export and import functionalities.

“Thanks to our collaboration with Liferay experts, we were able to execute the migration smoothly”, says Roque Fernandez. “The import and export tools didn’t always work perfectly, but our team put in significant effort to verify and adjust the content.”

A major advantage of the new SaaS solution is the ability to perform automatic updates, increased scalability, and improved security. The migration was also completed without any downtime—the old websites remained fully operational until the final DNS switch during the go-live on December 11, 2024.

Cost-effective and future-proof digital environment

The migration to the latest Liferay environment has provided UZ Brussel with a powerful and cost-effective digital environment. By making this transition, the websites now benefit from the latest Liferay features, while the SaaS model reduces upfront costs and maintenance efforts.

Benefits for  UZ Brussel:

• High availability and security: The SaaS solution makes UZ Brussel’s websites more secure and robust than ever.
• Future-proof: Automatic updates and new features ensure the platform remains up to date.
• Minimal impact on end users: The go-live was seamless, with no disruptions for active users.