WSO2 accelerates business in Sri Lanka

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Leading enterprise middleware company WSO2 announced five successful business ventures last week that they undertook in Sri Lanka, all of which highlighted the company’s comprehensive middleware solution facilitating business productivity with innovation and vision and expressed its enthusiasm in further accelerating business within the country.

WSO2 Founder and CEO Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana (fourth from right) addresses the media. Others from left are Chris Haddad (WSO2), Jayantha Fernando (ICTA), Ramesh Shanmuganathan John Keells Holdings Plc, Jonathan Marsh (WSO2), Anthony Rodrigo Dialog Axiata PLC, Thilanka Kiriporuwa (ODEL) and Paul Fremantle (WSO2) – Pic by Daminda Harsha Perera

Established in 2005, the US headquartered company with subsidiaries in the UK and Sri Lanka brought together some of their valued customers in Sri Lanka to talk about their individual experiences with working with WSO2.

With its main operations arm in Sri Lanka, WSO2 delivers the industry’s most comprehensive middleware platforms for enabling Service Oriented Architectures and integrated application development.

“We are increasingly seeing global and local enterprises making WSO2 their choice for strategic enterprise middleware,” stated WSO2 Founder and CEO Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana at the press briefing.

“I am excited that enterprises are taking advantage of our high performance and flexible deployments and that we are able to meet the requirements while delivering unmatched value to companies like eBAy, AAA, British Airways and more, right here from Sri Lanka.”

Among the many global companies signed up over the last few years, the new businesses in Sri Lanka who have turned to WSO2 for flexible and innovative solutions include Brandix, Dialog Axiata, ICTA, John Keells Holdings and ODEL.

The scale of data people now use in businesses is expanding rapidly, using cloud to enable new business models, with the use the smartphones and so on, pointed out WSO2 Vice President of Technology Evangelism Chris Haddad. He went on to say that one of the things you notice about countries like Sri Lanka is their ability to leapfrog onto more advanced technologies than seemingly more advanced countries.

“The telco industry in Sri Lanka for instance has more innovative services and more interesting business models than any company in the US. When you have a clean sheet, the demand for certain technologies can sometimes be far greater. That has driven WSO2 to have a very tight connection with our customers and that has driven us to do things that other businesses haven’t done,” he said.

John Keells Holdings PLC Executive Vice President and Group CIO Ramesh Shanmuganathan expressing his views on working with the middleware company admitted that when running heavy applications, it is often a challenge to get them to ‘talk’ to each other.

“In the retail industry, it is important for us to be responsive to the market in different areas. The volatility in the retail sector can be handled if we are able to manage applications simultaneously. The WSO2 product that we are currently using in our supermarkets allows us to just that; we chose it over the SAP platform and are satisfied with that decision,” he stated. Dialog Axiata Group Chief Information Officer Anthony Rodrigo shared similar sentiments, noting that they were very happy with the progress made with the WSO solution that they implemented and are now looking to expand by implementing it through the entire group.

“We have an extensive focus on customer experience and the mobile check-out facility with a mobile device that we launched with WSO2 mirrors that. It helps customers get their items billed quickly – this is very useful for our own transactions and adds to the overall customer experience,” said ODEL Head of Human Resources and Operations Thilanka Kiriporuwa.

He added that the loyalty programme which was also launched recently with the technical support of WSO2 has grown tremendously over the last six months and praised the middleware company for understanding specific customer needs and commended them for their customer-centric approach.

“I’m glad that WSO2 has also joined our list of private sector partners in a collaborative journey to help Sri Lanka leapfrog into the next phase off ICT development,” said ICTA Director and Legal Advisor Jayantha Fernando.

“It is also comforting to know that WSO2 has been able to compete not only at a global level for projects in the international arena but also compete with international players within the Sri Lankan market to add value to the ICT Echo system here and contribute towards our own country’s socio-economic development.”

WSO Vice President of Business Development Jonathan Marsh revealed that the middleware company has expanded by taking on more customers in South America with customers coming to them after finding the interaction with WSO2 technology to be a powerful enabler of innovation and doing business more efficiently and quickly.

He added that there has been a huge uptake in inquires and requests for partnerships over the last six months from some very big global corporations.