1-For-All Marketing- Localization Case Studies: Platinum Technologies

Localization Project Management

for Platinum Technology, Inc. (acquired by Computer Associates)

The creators of Forest & Trees, a development platform for building decision support applications in the enterprise, recognized a special opportunity to enable their product for double-byte scripts. In the first stage of this effort, the product would correctly handle Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, with the user interface still in English. This certification would provide a boost to sales in the region and permit users in any country to support both Western and Far Eastern character sets.

Platinum engaged John White of 1-for-All Marketing to first scope, then to manage and document the enabling process.

This internationalization consulting on enterprise applications such as Forest & Trees touches many areas of the product life cycle, including:

Detailed analysis of the work to be performed
Go/no-go decision to proceed
Planning workflow and resources
Execution and day-to-day project management across timezones
Ongoing support for internationalization in subsequent releases
Tapping into the existing resources of large software companies
Coordinating QA efforts half a world away
Upsides/downsides to Unicode/MBCS
Building CJK testbenches
Scrupulously documenting process, schedule and project plan