SUN MICROSYSTEMS

Customer Challenge

Localization is a mission-critical facet of Sun's international business model. In fact, Sun has an internal mandate to release localized product versions within 30 days of the domestic release date.

Given fierce industry competitiveness, Sun wanted to capture additional revenue by releasing Asian market products in less than 30 days. At the same time, Sun wanted to improve the consistency and quality of Asian language products-helping to reduce support costs and increase customer satisfaction. Finally, Sun wanted to significantly lower in-house and external localization costs.

Because of the complex proprietary nature of Sun's products, the company required a vendor who could install the Sparc/Solaris environment at all locations, a task which normally requires considerable capital investment and an extended training period.

Sun was well aware of the challenges faced in localizing product for Asian markets and believed it could meet its goals by working with a single vendor. In 1997, Sun chose Real Idea to provide services in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Real Idea created a dedicated Sun localization team and invested heavily in Sun hardware and technology.

Real Idea created a Sun-specific training program and style guide as well as a multi-lingual project management system and procedures. Real Idea built a complete translation and terminology database to leverage existing translations for consistency among different products-thus reducing overall project costs. Real Idea also built tools and checklists to increase productivity and improve the quality of deliverables and collaborated with Sun's engineering team on software QA testing

Sun has benefited from the timely release of multilingual products versions, improved consistency and quality, and significant reduction in costs. Further, Sun has increased internal efficiencies through freeing its in-house team to focus core competencies.

During its eight-year relationship with Sun, Real Idea has built an experienced and knowledgeable project team. We are involved with up to 20 projects monthly, ranging from operating system software and desktop applications to storage and server software.

As of early 2004, Real Idea has translated more than 10 million words for Sun and has spent more than 10,000 hours on software QA testing.

For more information about how Real Idea can assist your company in launching your products on international markets, please contact us at ri-info@realidea.com.

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