Except to point out that press releases announcing a new customer are a marketing tactic to reassure existing customers about the wisdom of their choice, we typically ignore such announcements. However, this one caught our eye as it flies in the face of our frequent contention that LSPs are uncomfortable buying core technology from a rival LSP that happens to sell software (SDL and STAR are longtime hybrid LSP/ISVs, with companies like Sajan and Transware joining the club). GALA's survey of its LSP members about SDL's acquisition of Trados validated this concern. Euroscript has decided to buck the LSP trend and buy into SDL's translation workflow management and other tools.

We recently spoke to Jay Marciano, SDL's U.S.-based director of machine translation technologies, who proferred his opinion on why LSPs would overcome any reluctance to buy tools from SDL. "As you have pointed out in a variety of places, we will see how the market feels about buying tools from a services player. The way I see it is that a good set of tools that is well-established is awfully hard to displace. And on top of that, a set of tools that is developed by a company that continually evaluates how to streamline processes because it lives or dies by the very success of those processes, will likely yield an increasingly compelling set of tools." That company, of course, is SDL.