SDL, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions, today announced its planned roadmap for delivering the industry’s most powerful enterprise translation management solution.

SDL has in the last few years made significant organic investment as well as a number of acquisitions related to enterprise translation management technology, to enhance its overall offering of GIM.  These acquisitions, combined with more than 400 years of R&D investment by SDL into translation management technology, position the company to provide market-leading GIM products and services that support the requirements of today’s global enterprise.
 
“Our first clients such as HP, Philips, Adobe and Oracle pioneered the early adoption of GIM strategies that have helped them achieve unprecedented levels of business efficiency and competitiveness,” said Mark Lancaster, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SDL.   “There is increasing customer demand for technology and process innovation from SDL to help companies both grow their global revenues and reduce the cost of supporting their global customer base, thereby increasing their global market share.”

Project Affinity

“Project Affinity” is the codename for the next-generation SDL Translation Management System™ (SDL TMS™) solution that will be available for adoption by  new GIM clients as well as existing enterprise customers.  The solution will leverage the recently unveiled SDL Common Enterprise Application Framework (CEAF) as well as the best features from existing SDL enterprise translation management products:  SDL TMS, SDL WorldServer™ and SDL TeamWorks™. SDL is committed to supporting these market-leading products while focusing significant development resources on creating the next-generation enterprise translation management offering.

A technology preview and design partner program, complete with beta testing, is expected to be available within the next 12 months.

The new SDL Translation Management System will offer the following benefits:

• Open architecture, with an extensive SDK 

• Reliability, scalability and performance

• Industry-leading translation memory engine

• Comprehensive filter framework

• Intuitive graphical workflow design and workflow conditional branching

• Extensive content repository connectivity

• Complete translation supply chain integration

• Seamless interoperability with SDL GIM modules including automated translation, terminology management, translation memory, global authoring, web content management, component content management and software localization 

“We recognize that our existing enterprise translation management solutions provide significant value to our current customers,” commented Keith Mills, President, Technology at SDL.  “We are committed to actively maintaining SDL TMS, SDL WorldServer  and SDL TeamWorks while innovating to create new GIM technology with smooth migration from our existing TMS products.  The next-generation SDL TMS represents the future of global content management.  In partnership with our customers, we are excited to deliver a solution that provides even greater performance, reliability and rich features that the industry has come to expect and rely on from SDL.” 

Important Milestones

• SDL TMS, SDL WorldServer and SDL TeamWorks sales, support and maintenance continue until the production release of Project Affinity.

• Support for the latest versions of SDL TMS, SDL WorldServer and SDL TeamWorks continues for at least one year following the release of Project Affinity.

• Concurrent with ongoing development, migration teams are creating methodologies and best practices for smooth migration to Project Affinity.

For more information please go to http://www.sdl.com/ceaf-platform/