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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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New DNA for the Globalization Gene Pool
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Last month MultiCorpora announced the appointment of Pierre Blais as the new President and CEO. Blais comes to the language tools industry via Reynolds & Reynold, a supplier of software to the automotive world. His move parallels that of quite a few executives who transferred to localization and translation from other industries. Of these new guys (yes, all men) coming into the business, we see a healthy mix of hands-on businessmen, technologists, and entrepreneurs who have had some success in the "real" world of software, hardware, and services. Who else has come in recently?
Lionbridge brought in COO Satish Maripuri (eXcelon -- object, XML database) and CIO Dave Flanagan (Storage Networks -- managed storage) to build out the company's managed service business. Across town at Idiom Mike Iacobucci (Books247 -- electronic publishing) succeeded CEO Joe Fiorentino (ePrise CMS). Meanwhile, Idiom's marketing VP Dave Rosenlund (Rational Software -- software development platform) was pushing the company beyond the low-oxygen market of globalization management systems into the more visible value proposition of a single-source global content life cycle.
At SDL VP of marketing Terry Lawlor (Informix -- DBMS) and Clive Thomas (OILspace -- hosted software for the oil industry) will sell the world on global information management, aided by Trados CEO Joe Campbell (iManage -- document management) who will join the SDL board and perhaps by CMO Bill Seawick (Blue Pumpkin -- call center). Transware brought in new CEO Tom Kelly (BlueStar -- application management outsourcing) to drive the company's service and business process outsourcing (BPO) efforts.
We know there are other transplants from the world of mainstream software jumping on globalization, but these are enough names to call this a trend. Companies like Idiom, Lionbridge, and Transware are reaching out to these mainstream technology industry executives for their enterprise knowledge, business expertise, insight, and vision to connect globalization to critical business issues like BPO, software as a service, and the information life cycle. They hope that this new blood will shove the language business from its frequent role as an afterthought to a more vivacious role in product development and the content life cycle.
From our conversations with them, we find that these language industry newbies see enormous value in what the language industry does, but they don't see the business succeeding in its current form. The business -- whether language services or tools -- needs new thinking and new money.
As it has already done, SDL has dug into it cash hoard for more marketing and to buy a bothersome rival. At smaller suppliers we see venture capitalists stepping up to the plate again as they did by funding Transware's purchase of GlobalSight and wiring another US$5 million to Idiom's bank account.
The big question for everyone else is whether these executives can convince the VC, other investors, and partners like Hewlett Packard and IBM with co-marketing dollars to get some of that old-time globalization religion that was in such strong supply back in 1999.
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