TRADOS has announced a Globalization Partner Program in an effort to bring "together leading globalization software and services companies to remove complex, persistent barriers that prevent enterprises from effectively reaching global markets." In other words, if we can all get along with one another perhaps we can all make a little extra money.

In all seriousness, this is what the clients want: content management software, localization software and globalization management software that all play well with one another. I'm glad TRADOS is taking the lead on this.

Inaugural partner members include:

-> EMC Corporation for EMC Documentum products (enterprise content management)
-> RedDot Solutions (enterprise content management)
-> Blast Radius (XMetaL XML content creation)
-> Glemser Technologies (systems integration for life sciences)
-> Day Software (enterprise content management)
-> InterDoc (integrator for enterprise content management systems)
-> Alchemy Software Development (visual software localization solutions)
-> PASS Engineering (visual software localization solutions)
-> acrolinx (controlled language and linguistic tools)
-> Transclick (real-time translation services)
-> Transmissions (desktop publishing localization tools)

This is a nice mix of large and small vendors. I have no hard research to base this on but I get the feeling we're going to see another wave of CMS vendors emerge, spawned in part by the open-source movement and the failure of the "big boys" like Documentum and Vignette to ever ship a low-end solution.

So, for the clients, content globalization is going to get more complicated before they get less complicated, which is why the TRADOS partner program is a good idea at the right time.