Bringing out the best of creativity and innovation, WSO2 Sri Lanka, a lean enterprise middleware company, opened its new state-of-the-art office premises where an ‘open house’ was also held to showcase the unique features of the premises that challenge and go beyond the norms of Sri Lanka’s corporate culture.
By Hansani Bandara Photographs Damith Wickramasinghe
The prominent glass edifice-an innovation in itself in the areas of design and interior deco is located in Colpetty. It has become a landmark in the city, for its unique features and facilities, which are thus incorporated to the premises to be an impetus that gives rise to continuous innovation.
Greeting everyone just as they enter the lobby is the highlight of the lobby area which is a massive aquarium that adds a tranquil ambience to the space while instituting a state of peaceful calmness in the atmosphere.
“Our vision is to be the world’s number one middleware provider and to be able to successfully compete in this space, we need to meet certain standards. These standards don’t apply only to technical expertise, but also our work culture and how we operate,” said Dr Sanjiva Weerawarana, Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Each work floor of the seven-storey building depicts a theme-graffiti, ACM Turing Awards, automotive, nature, computer parts and space. The themes were selected by the staff through an open voting process that is used in all decision making at WSO2.
Each theme of the floor is linked to the functions carried out at the respective departments which occupies the space. For instance, the engineering teams who need to ‘tinker with’ everything have a floor themed under automotive and computer parts. The ACM Turing Award, which is the pinnacle of achievement in computer science, has been used as another theme for one out of the three floors occupied by the engineering teams, as inspiration to strive for best results.
Each Work Floor Of The Seven-Storey Building Depicts A Theme- Graffiti, ACM Turing Awards, Automotive, Nature, Computer Parts And Space.
The interesting array of computer hardware parts used for decoration is a clear reflection of the creativity that is prevalent within the company’s workforce. The nature theme reflects the company’s natural and human approach to sales and marketing efforts. Graffiti encourages internal support teams to be creative in managing human resources and administration tasks.
The rooftop includes a crèche, a basketball court and a fully equipped gym for office staff. The ground and mezzanine floors include a lounge, a lunch area and recreation facilities. “The openness reflects our extremely transparent culture. This industry is driven by innovation and this has been carried through how we operate as well, by way of providing the right environment to think out of the box,” says Dr Weerawarana.
Today, there is a greater focus on enterprise IT because this facilitates change and aids with adapting to change. A key challenge faced by most companies today is the lack of resources to keep pace with the required changes in enterprise development, and WSO2 through its open source middleware has been able to meet some of these challenges, adds Dr Weerawarana.
WSO2’s main advantage is that all of its products are built on a common foundation-WSO2 Carbon, a modular, reconfigurable, elastic, OSGi-based architecture which in turn ensures a solid base for building large scale enterprise applications, as well as seamlessly integrating with legacy and existing applications.
WSO2 also hosts a variety of events such as webinars, workshops, conferences and meet-ups for knowledge sharing and networking around the various open source and other business communities.
The company’s clientele is inclusive of renowned business enterprises such as Boeing company, eBay, Cisco Systems US, British Airways, Dialog Axiata, Fidelty Investments, John Keells Holdings and Dubai eGovernment.
