SOLUTIONS

If you’re considering internationalizing your software, it’s because expansion into overseas markets is important to your business. By ensuring that your software is as precise and powerful in any language as it is in English, internationalization forms the foundation for the future growth of your company.

To truly capitalize on the opportunities presented by international expansion, it’s critical to find an experienced partner who will provide you with the quality internationalization work you need in order to conquer new markets. Successful internationalization is not about a roomful of engineers extracting strings. It’s not about “one-off” solutions to meet the requirements of a new international customer. It’s about reengineering your technology so that it delivers value now and in the future, in every country, with every upgrade, through a single code base.

Why choose Basis Technology?

At Basis Technology, you will find:

A long history of proven sucess: Here are just a few of the companies who have turned to Basis Technology with their most complex internationalization challenges:

Our strong reputation in the I18N business is built on the success of our customers. If your company’s path to future revenues goes through international markets, why take chances?

A broad range of skill sets: We can provide you with the expertise to complement your internal team, including I18N engineers, computational linguists, international quality assurance specialists, project managers, and native language speakers. A typical Basis employee has worked on dozens of complex internationalization projects.

A flexible approach tailored to your unique situation: We understand that your company and technology are unique. We never try to sell you a pre-packaged approach; rather, we propose a plan of action that’s specifically tailored to your situation. You’ll never pay for services you don’t need.

Key steps to internationalization success:

Preparing your software for international markets involves a myriad of technical considerations which must be addressed before a software product can achieve success in a new country. Every situation is unique, but there are a number of specific phases in every I18n endeavor. Basis can complement your internal team every step of the way.

• Analysis: Understanding what modifications your products will need in order to operate properly in target languages.
• Planning: Creating plan of action to outline the optimum approach to internationalization, including cost projections.
• Implementation: Reengineering your software so that it operates in each target country as if it was specifically developed for that country.
• Testing:Putting your software through rigorous international Quality Assurance, including review by native speakers, in order to ensure local acceptance.

Analysis

The first step in any internationalization project is to understand your technology’s internationalization readiness. For example, is your technology Unicode enabled? Are there third-party components that need to be considered? Are there locale-specific features that need to be added to support new markets?

At Basis Technology, we can provide you with an internationalization assessment that gives you an idea of what you can expect when embarking on an I18n effort. Depending on your needs, these assessments can range from a one-day, on-site session with an internationalization expert to a comprehensive audit of your technology including a source code review. This will give you an idea of the issues that need to be addressed before rolling your software out to a new country, such as:

• What architectural changes are required to support new locales
• Which encoding(s) are best used in each part of the product to store non-ASCII text
• What database changes, if any, are required
• What development and testing processes need to be modified to support an internationalized product
• How to merge results back into the mainline development stream so that future versions will be internationalized
• How existing customers can upgrade to the new, internationalized product with minimum disruption

Planning:

Once you’ve got a grasp on your software’s internationalization readiness, it’s time to start planning your approach. Basis Technology can provide you with as much detail as you need, from a general outline to a detailed project blueprint including:

• Re-engineering tasks and effort required
• Timeliness
• Third-party dependencies
• Specific recommendations for overcoming risk areas
• Costs

Implementation:

The implementation phase includes a multitude of detailed engineering tasks such as Unicode-enabling the source code, widening fields in the database schema, adding fields that are necessary for some languages, repairing fragmented and concatenated text strings, generalizing use of date, currency and mailing address formats, and reworking dialogue boxes. Basis Technology’s engineering experts can complement your internationalization team with a wide array of services, including:

• Architecture and design
• Re-engineering, co-development and branch development
• Unicode enablement and support
• Management of the entire internationalization process
• Knowledge transfer to ensure successful future projects

Testing:

QA for internationalized software requires specific procedures that go beyond traditional testing. To be successful, international QA must include review by native language speakers who are knowledgeable about the country’s culture, the hardware and infrastructure to test native language operating systems, and the ability to set up and document a localized test process that can be used each time support for a new country is rolled out.

Basis Technology’s highly experienced QA team can provide you with a range of services, including:

• QA Planning, including developing a process, training your QA engineers, and documenting your locale- and language-specific test plans, schedules, and test matrices
• Software certification, including performing comprehensive testing with a rigorous set of internationalized test plans and review by native language speakers
• Reporting, including progress metrics and a finalized certification report

For more information on on how our internationalization services can help you succeed in new markets, please call us at 800-697-2062 or email us at info@basistech.com