Open Standards

Globalization Insider: What qualifies Welocalize to spearhead an Open Source initiative for GlobalSight? How did this idea come about?

Gary Prioste: We may not be qualified, to be truthful! But we are absolutely committed to providing a robust, open source translation management system, which both clients and service providers can use to support their business. We have formed a Steering Committee and brought in developers and legal and community building experts. There are many ways to go about building the community, licensing the operating system, etc., so we want all the input we can get to do this right.

Editor’s Note: The GlobalSight Steering Committee includes AOL, Autodesk, Cisco, EMC, IBM, NetApp, Novell, Salesforce.com, Sun Microsystems and TIBCO.

We also intend to use the technology in-house ourselves. In fact, we’re already using it now for some projects. We will migrate from WorldServer eventually, so we will create an integration toolkit for those components that can be automated. (The tool is currently scheduled for mid-2009.)

GlobalSight turned out to be ‘frosting on the cake’

When we purchased Transware, we were primarily interested in the services side of its business. GlobalSight turned out to be ‘frosting on the cake,’ so to speak. A lot had been invested originally in the product, but it had been ignored over the last 3 to 4 years. We knew that it would take a substantial investment to compete commercially.

But it’s always about the people, and we gained some very good people through the acquisition. Specifically, the Senior Product Manager for GlobalSight, who had done a very good job over the last two years, in spite of limited resources. There were also a couple of in-house developers and a large outsourced development team in China at Augmentum.

We have a development team of twelve right now. As we finish up the conversion to open source components, we’re focused on fixing bugs rather than adding any major new functionality. When the development is complete, our team will focus on customizations and extensions to the product.

Insider: What has the interest been like so far from the community?

Prioste: We first floated the idea during the LISA Forum USA in San Francisco back in June. And then we officially launched the GlobalSight Open Source Initiative in July. Since then, it has really taken off more than we ever expected. It turns out that there is a lot of pent-up demand for a solution like this.

As of today, more than 200 people have signed up to participate in the community, representing 147 companies. The breakdown is 38% corporate clients; 23% multi-language vendors (MLVs) and single-language vendors (SLVs); the rest represents translators, technology providers, organizations and research/educational institutions. The community has turned out to be a cross-pollination of interests and motivations, so it’s really ideal.

Insider: What does the current product roadmap look like?

Prioste: We will launch the first version on January 5, 2009 with open source components, along with a Getting Started Guide, and other supplemental documents. The goal is to allow people to become somewhat productive in a short period of time so that they can achieve some quick victories within their organizations. Early in 2009 we also plan to launch a portal to provide services like project scoping and dashboards to monitor key performance indicators.

(For more details on the product roadmap, visit http://www.globalsight.com/roadmap.html.)

Insider: What does the re-architecting for open source actually entail?

Prioste: To tell you the truth, with 1.5 million lines of code, this product is very complex – a beast, actually! Therefore, we’re also cleaning up as we replace components with open source pieces. We are doing a lot of scalability testing and a lot more functional testing than usual. We’re really investing quite a bit in the re-architecture to ensure that the codebase will be as clean as possible for the future – we know that we only get one chance to do this right. About 35% of the budget is for testing alone.

For those who are interested, we’re replacing the following functionality with open source components: workflow, database, object relationship mapping, middleware, directory management and scheduling.

Insider: Do you plan to leverage the community for the testing work?

Prioste: No, not until we reach beta testing. At that point (scheduled for December 10), we will open beta testing to the Steering Committee and to interested language service providers.

Insider: How standards-compliant is GlobalSight in its present form?

Open standards are as important to us as open source

Prioste: Open standards are the only way to achieve interoperability with others’ data and processes. It can be frustrating, though, because you need a critical mass of users to realize the true benefits of this model.

In our first release, we will fully support LISA standards TMX and SRX 2.0. If TBX doesn’t make it into the first release, it will be there soon after. We are now an active member of LISA’s OSCAR, and we’re providing input to the OAXAL standard through OASIS.

Editor’s Note: For more details on the new OAXAL standard, read OAXAL: What Is It and Why Should I Care?

Insider: How competitive is the current version of GlobalSight? How big is the current user base?

Prioste: There are about a dozen fairly good-sized companies that run either a hosted or SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) version. In 2005, the GlobalSight (Ambassador) developers spent two years converting the product to an SaaS model. We’re now enabling that version to be downloadable to run on-site.

In some cases, GlobalSight has better functionality than other products. For example, the in-country review function allows both online and offline reviews. There is also a lot of flexibility with all the tools based on SRX that are required to update and migrate TMs (translation memories).

It has centralized TMs, terminology management, workflow and review. It does the same things that other products in its class can do. There are some minor shortcomings, such as the fact that there is no hierarchical TM support . The first release will still have some of these shortcomings.

But, remember, we’re releasing this to the open source community to leverage their knowledge and creativity. This will no longer be a commercial product that depends on just one in-house development team for ideas and resources. That’s the exciting part.

Insider: What 3 pieces of advice would you give the manager in charge of a large Idiom WorldServer implementation as s/he considers the future migration path for his/her organization?

Prioste: If I were sitting in their shoes, I would be hedging my bets. Pay attention to what SDL is doing and make a contingency path. Ask yourself all of the questions, e.g., is .NET the right solution for my organization? How much will it really cost in the long-run? How much leverage will I have supporting my relationship with SDL?

The point is not to be held captive by any one software company

And then, seriously weigh the option that includes GlobalSight as an alternative to that proprietary path. You can take what we have for free. If you want our support, we’re there for implementation, custom integration, general support 24/7, etc. Yes, we will charge for our services, but it is your choice.

One important piece of the equation is that a lot of customers may not really need any development resources internally. We expect customers to be able to make it work for them without messing around with the code. There will also be a web services API available to allow users to extend and integrate the product into existing systems. The point is not to be held captive by any one software company.

Insider: What will your licensing model look like?

Prioste: Licensing is still under discussion by the Steering Committee. Obviously, we’re taking a lot of input from Sun and Novell.

Insider: Will the product be localized in its first release?

Prioste: That would be nice! But we’re going to depend on the community to ensure that this happens.

Insider: What are your plans for building the GlobalSight community and ecosystem over the next year?

Prioste: We have launched www.globalsight.com and encourage anyone who’s interested to sign up on the site to stay up-to-date on all that’s going on. We’ll be launching a more interactive version of the website in December. Steering Committee members have volunteered to participate in focus groups, or sub-committees, to discuss key strategic items, including licensing, competitive analysis, community building and governance. They are presenting their findings back to the committee-at-large.

December 11 – Join us in Dublin for the first European GlobalSight Community Meeting

We have a dedicated marketing person who focuses on community building. People in the U.S. had a chance in October to participate in the GlobalSight North American Community Meeting. We just held a webinar to demo the product at the end of November. And this month (December), in association with the LISA Forum Europe in Dublin, we will hold the first European GlobalSight Community Meeting during which we will demo the open source version of product. We will also provide program updates and engage the community in a discussion on the critical success factors for building and supporting a robust and sustainable open source translation management system.

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Gary Prioste is VP of Technology Services at Welocalize. With over twenty years of experience in the delivery and support of complex IT solutions, he has significant senior level experience in business management, strategic business development, product development and operations. Prior to Welocalize, Gary was the CEO of Localize Technologies, which was acquired by Welocalize in August 2007. He was also founder and CEO of SpinAway Technologies and CEO of Servinet Consulting, a firm that he grew from one employee in 1989 to over USD 25M in revenue.