Going Global Carl Hoffman PresidentCEO Basis Technology Corp.

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Going GlobalCarl HoffmanPresident/CEOBasis
Technology Corp.
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About Basis Technology

• We enable American technology firms to expand
  globally
• We focus on high-growth markets in Japan, Korea,
  and Greater China
• Our track record of success with top-tier
  companies includes

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Wheres the Market?

• North America 182M online
• Languages English, Spanish, French
• 32M Americans switch from English to another
  language at home (US Census)
• Western Europe 98M online
• Many languages, many locales, many currencies
• Biggest markets Germany (22M), UK (21M), Italy
  (14M), France (11M)
• Japan 38M online
• One language, one currency, worlds second
  largest economy
• 30M Internet-enabled mobile phones
• Korea 19M online
• Early, enthusiastic adopters well-wired
• Greater China 39M online
• Five locales, two written languages, difficult to
  penetrate, but growing fast
• Source Global Reach

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Getting Started Basic Concepts

• Business objectives drive technology decisions
• Understand the concepts
• Globalization
• Internationalization
• Localization
• Translation
• Distinguish between disciplines
• Source Code
• User Interface
• User Documentation
• Marketing Literature
• Learn about translation
• Machine vs. Human
• Machine vs. Machine-Aided

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Dos and Donts

• Protect your intellectual property
• Teach the entire organization to think globally
• Perform due diligence when recruiting into
  overseas subsidiaries
• Recognize overseas revenue carefully
• Before you hire an eBusiness Globalizer, check
  their track record
• Before you hire a double byte expert, check
  their track record

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Globalize Your Technology

• Embrace Unicode
• Build a Unicode-compliant core
• Support legacy encodings at the periphery
• Build a common, internationalized, multilingual
  code base
• Internationalize first, then localize
• Externalize messages, menus, icons
• Dont confuse technology with translation
• Plan for locale-specific capabilities
• Searching, sorting, normalizing, etc.
• Dates, currencies, postal addresses, telephone
  numbers, names, etc.
• No substitute for good software engineering
  practices
• Source control
• Modularity
• Abstraction

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Enter Japan First

• Largest overseas market for US technology
  products and services
• Bigger market than all of Western Europe combined
• One language, one currency, one jurisdiction
• Office space and salaries getting very cheap
• American firms making huge strides as Japanese
  economy restructures

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Japan Strategies Vary Widely

• Yahoo! (Jan 1996)
• Joint venture with SoftBank (60/40)
• Success high
• AOL (May 1996)
• Joint venture with Mitsui, Nikkei, DoCoMo (65/35)
• Success low
• Lycos (April 1998)
• Joint venture with Sumitomo, IIJ, Kadokawa Shoten
  (55/45)
• Success high
• eBay (Sept 1999)
• Joint venture with NEC (30/70)
• Success low
• Amazon.com (Feb 2000)
• Wholly-owned subsidiary
• Success high

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Wireless in Japan

• Japan is the world leader in wireless handsets,
  networks, and services
• Number of mobile phones approx 60M
• Number of Internet-enabled mobile phones approx
  30M
• Forecasts for 2005 range from 80M (MCPC) to 104M
  (IDC)
• Keitai culture has pervaded Japanese youth and
  business
• Mobile users represent significant fraction of
  potential audience for online services in Japan
• Leading companies in wireless infrastructure and
  technology have sustained high valuations
• Confused response from foreign firms

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Case Study Amazon.com

• 1998-1999 Months of fruitless negotiations with
  SoftBank
• Jeff Bezos He wants a big fraction of the
  company
• February 18, 2000 Establishes partnership with
  Basis Technology
• November 1, 2000 Launches Amazon.co.jp with
  1.1M Japanese and 600K English titles
• December 18, 2000 Ranked 1 online bookstore in
  Japan
• Source Jupiter Media Metrix
• April 24, 2001 Reports record revenues from
  Japan
• Warren Jenson, CFO The growth rate in Japan has
  been stunning.
• Only major US Internet firm with wholly-owned
  subsidiary in Japan

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Case Study PeopleSoft

• March 1998 PeopleSoft embarks on major
  re-implementation effort
• Goal Create truly global product line delivered
  via the Internet
• July 11, 2000 PeopleSoft 8 launched
• Becomes first multilingual ERP system with full
  Unicode support
• January 9, 2001 PeopleSoft 8 hits 1,000 orders
• International sales double
• January 30, 2001 PeopleSoft reports 273
  increase in net income
• Highest performing software stock on NASDAQ
  during 2000Q4
• April 26, 2001 PeopleSoft reports record Q1
  revenue and profits
• Stock now more than double year-ago price

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Case Study Lycos

• December 1997 Basis Technology begins
  Unicode-enablement of core Lycos technology and
  creation of prototype Japanese search engine
• April 14, 1998 Lycos Japan launches
• August 23, 1999 Globalization partnership with
  Basis Technology
• September 14, 1999 Lycos Korea launches
• May 22, 2000 Lycos Asia launches in China, Hong
  Kong, and Taiwan
• Today Lycos Network maintains top rankings
  throughout Asia
• 2 in Japan
• 1 in Korea
• 1 in Singapore

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Memorable Bloopers

• January 1998 Sybase Japan overstates Q4 revenue
  by 65M, leading to class-action suits and
  top-level management shakeup
• February 1999 Inso restates Japan revenue
  turning 1998 profit into a loss
• October 2000 President and four employees of
  Liquid Audio Japan arrested for kidnapping
• December 2000 Lernout Hauspie files for
  bankruptcy after discovering 100M in cash
  missing from its South Korean unit
• March 2001 Credit Suisse Financial Products
  earns first criminal conviction of a bank in Japan

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Recommended Reading for Product Developers

• The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0By The Unicode
  ConsortiumPublished by Addison-Wesley
• CJKV Information ProcessingBy Ken
  LundePublished by OReilly Associates
• Java InternationalizationBy Andy Deitsch David
  CzarneckiPublished by OReilly Associates

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Thank You!
Carl HoffmanPresident/CEOBasis Technology
Corp.hoffman_at_basistech.com