SDL today announced its technology partner program. The key word here is "open" as SDL seeks to convey a partner-friendly approach to other vendors in the content creation and management industries. It also wants clients to know they can "plug and play" SDL software into a variety of other software packages.

Current partners include:

- EMC Documentum
- Interwoven
- Blast Radius
- Trisoft
- Tridion
- Astoria Software
- Day
- XyEnterprise
- Alchemy
- PASS Engineering

This isn't an exclusive partnership, so there's always room for an Idiom or STAR to try to do essentially the same thing. But it is important that SDL form these types of relationships and the company is clearly on the right track.

The magic, of course, is in the execution. Here's the SDL press release.

Speaking of the press release, I'm still not sure SDL's new acronym: GIM (global information management) is going to stick. The companies I've been talking with lately still think and speak in words like "translation" and "web globalization." While I like what SDL is trying to do, I'm not sure this acronym fits the target audience. But time will tell.

And on a side note, two buzzwords that I'm seeing SDL and Lionbridge use a lot of lately are "velocity" and "ecosystem." And I don't particularly like either one of them. Why? Because I've yet to meet with a buyer of localization services ever use these words. Nobody says I need a vendor who "exhibits high velocity" or "embraces the globalization ecosystem."

Perhaps I've just been reading too many press release lately.