Category Archives: Web Globalization

Tridion and Ion Global Partner

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Tridion is a Web CMS software company that has carved out a lucrative — and growing — niche of supporting global/local content management. That is, the software allows local offices to easily create and blend local and global content while working within global design templates and business rules. It’s not the only software that does this, but it has a pretty strong following of customers in Europe and it is now making a strong push into the US.

The company announced today that it has partnered with globalization services firm Ion Global to target the US market. Ion Global isn’t selling the software; it is playing the role of integrator and has already worked on a few such implementations thus far. This sounds like a nice pairing.

I plan to take a test drive of the software in the weeks ahead.

Alibris Gearing Up to Expand Globally

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As books continue to become harder and harder to find on Amazon’s home page, It’s nice to see a Web site like Alibris, which serves up only books, CDs, and DVDs. The company appears to be doing quite well and is gearing up for expansion, in the US and abroad.

According to Internet Retailer, “Jeanie Bunker, formerly the vice president of global direct marketing at Yahoo, has been named vice president, sales and marketing, and has been charged with orchestrating the company’s international expansion.”

So expect to see a localized Alibris site (or two) in the future. Currently, we’ve got Borders going into the Middle East and B&N denying that it is expanding into Israel.

And Amazon has not made any geographic expansion moves in over a year. Last year, I thought they might make a move into India since they already have development people there. But it seems the company is more focused on expanding product lines than expanding into new markets. Perhaps Alibris sees an opportunity that Amazon does not.

China and Japan: So Close But Yet So Far

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The Pew Global Attitudes Project recently conducted a survey of citizens of Japan, China, Pakistan, and India.

Conclusion: These people don’t like each other all that much.

Between contested territories, painful histories, and the simple fact that neighbors often make the best enemies, I guess none of this should come as a surprise.

Here are the numbers for China and Japan:
Pew Asia survey

These numbers may be a little intimidating to Japanese companies hoping to win over Chinese consumers, who are among the most coveted consumers on this planet these days. But they must also pose a challenge to Chinese companies with aspirations of becoming global brands, such a Lenovo and Haier and Chery.

Or, perhaps none of this matters as much anymore when it comes to building a global brand — brands are increasingly created, managed, and (to a growing extent) viewed as distinct from their countries of origin.

Transware Ambassador

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Yesterday Transware announced its latest version of its globalization CMS software application: Ambassador 6.8. According to the release, the software “allows customers of Transware’s translation services to automate the ordering, workflow, approval and review of their translation and localization projects across the company.” Long-term industry folks will know that Ambassador was acquired from ailing GlobalSight in 2005. Transware has since made a number of improvements to the software. But perhaps the biggest change is that Transware is not for sale — it’s offered as a free hosted platform for Transware clients (similar to Lionbridge’s Freeway platform).

There is one very important quote from the Transware release:

“Customers often think that the key to saving money on translation is in the per-word rates of the target language. And it’ true that some short-term savings can be had by shopping for the lowest rate per word, but really over the long term, significant savings come to companies with an effective workflow for getting content into and out of the translation process.”

So true. As companies evolve from managing two to three language Web sites to twenty to thirty languages, efficient workflow becomes downright critical to controlling costs and content.

Over the last three issues of Global by Design I’ve taken test drives of the latest globalization CMS tools, including Transware Ambassador and SDL TMS (with more to come).

Based on what I’ve seen, Ambassador deserves a look, particularly from companies that are taking a hard look at Lionbridge Freeway.