Arbortext Joins Forces with Trados to Provide Global Enterprise Publishing Solutions

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Posted by Donald A. DePalma on May 16, 2005 in the following blogs: Technology, Translation and Localization
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This announcement partners long-time publishing tool supplier Arbortext with translation tool provider Trados. It echoes the many relationships announced in 1999-2001 between content management (CMS) and self-described globalization management (GMS) companies like Global Sight, Idiom, and Uniscape (now part of Trados and still visible in its GXT product). The problem for those partnerships was that they did little more than allow the CMS vendor (Interwoven, Vignette) to tick off the "globalization support" box on customer requests. Both the CMS and GMS firms issued press releases, but little or no business ever came to the latter from these partnerships. The checkbox, though, allowed the CMS company to overcome an objection. We regularly called such toothless arrangements "Barneys" after the big purple dinosaur who sings "I love you, you love me, I love you, We're a happy family."

Initially the challenge for both companies will be to integrate products and technical support teams to deliver on their promise of seamless document creation to transformation cycles. Then it's up to each firm's pre-sales support, training, marketing, sales, and post-sales support to create and sustain a cohesive offering. This will be especially difficult given Trados' aspirations to do the same with other CMS and document management suppliers such as Documentum -- such relationships consume marketing, management, customer support, and technology resources.

Can Arbortext and Trados break the pattern of dsyfunctional globalization partnerships by creating an offering that actually benefits customers and prospects rather than just their respective marketing departments? The history of such relationships says no, but we'll defer judgment until we see the results of their collaboration in technology and joint marketing. We note one bad omen: Trados posted the press release on its website on 16 May, but as of a day later Arbortext hadn't.

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