Tech-Heavy LSPs Pump Up Executive Ranks

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Global Watchtower

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Posted by Donald A. DePalma on January 7, 2010 in the following blogs: Business Globalization, Best Practices, Market Data, Technology, Translation and Localization
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Several language service providers (LSPs) with technology credentials announced executive changes meant to buttress their business models, engineering prowess, or competitiveness. Four of them -- Elanex, Lionbridge, SDL, and thebigword -- compete in the translation management system (TMS) sector.

Elanex adds a president. San Franciso-based Elanex announced that industry veteran Don Plumley joined the company as president, where he will be responsible for sales, marketing, and operations. Plumley had been chief marketing officer and senior VP at Bowne Global Solutions, at which he oversaw the consolidation of 13 companies and growth from US$20 million to $150 million in revenue. In the last year, Elanex expanded its sales footprint outside the U.S. The company hopes that Plumley will help it break into the Top 30 tier of language service providers.

Lionbridge hires a senior VP of engineering for SaaS. Mark Nesline signed on with Lionbridge as senior vice president of engineering and will be responsible for the company's upcoming Translation Workspace software-as-a-service (SaaS) TMS and accompanying Geoworkz.com e-commerce gateway. The company has spent the last 18 months commercializing its in-house solution. Nesline's role will be to oversee Lionbridge's language translation technology development and corporate applications, a sign that it's in the software business for the long haul.

SDL appoints a CEO for its language technology business. Alan Sloan joined SDL as CEO of its Language Technologies division. With about a third of its revenue derived from software sales, this new position is meant to delineate language technology such as TMS and Trados from the company's Tridion and XySoft content management offerings. The announcement promises that Sloan "will provide dedicated and independent management to one of SDL’s key divisions," a critical factor for the company as it strives to meet corporate interest in and LSP demands for language technology independence. Sloan will report to Mark Lancaster, CEO and Chairman of the SDL Group.

thebigword promotes an executive to run U.S. operations. Michael Ridgway moved from running sales in the States to managing the whole American operation. His focus has been on increasing thebigword's turnover in telephone interpreting, especially to federal agencies (see "Language Services and the U.S. Federal Government," Dec09).

High on the to-do lists of most of these new executives will be ensuring that their translation management offerings can scale to the ambitious plans of large buyers who rely ever more heavily on their centralized TMS installations for translation buying, production, and multi-LSP vendor management. As we wrote in our predictions for 2010, heavier TMS use will test scalability, usability, functionality, integration, and reporting -- at the same time that it stresses the development, support, and executive teams of their suppliers being asked to support enterprise-class demands.

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