Case Study

Slob-Trot Software Oy Ab

Our estimate is that with MULTILIZER®, we achieved at least three (3) months faster Time-to-Global-Market." - Mikael Krogius, the CEO of Slob-Trot Software

Quoting Mikael Krogius, the CEO of Slob-Trot Software:

Clients and Partners

"Our customers and partners include worldwide Mobile operators, WAP Service portals and the leading manufacturing companies benefiting new mobile technologies. For example, Firehunter from Agilent Technologies, the global leader in designing and manufacturing test, measurement and monitoring systems, has licensed our WAP technology. Another major company, the BMW Group, will use our technology in their research to provide advanced wireless solutions for future cars.

Product

Our main product is WinWAP ( www.winwap.org ), a multilingual WAP browser for Windows environment. WinWAP enables the user to use WAP services with their desktop or notebook - no matter if you are connected through wireless or LAN connection. Since the interface is familiar from HTML browsers, users do not need to learn anything new to use it. As a native windows application it brings the familiar user interface and typical windows services such as printing, copying, etc. to WAP users.

Globalization Technology

We used MULTILIZER® Software Globalization FrameworkT / Windows support and its related globalization method when globalizing the WinWAP product.

Supported Languages

The current WinWAP product supports the following seven languages: English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Support for the following five languages has already been added to the next version shipping soon: Chinese, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. Our product was localized into twelve (12) languages through the MULTILIZER® globalization process.

MULTILIZER® Globalization Process

Our intention was to publish WinWAP simultaneously in several geographical markets, so we needed a globalization solution to achieve optimal Time-to-Global-Market. We chose MULTILIZER® because of its innovative technology and streamlined globalization process.

Slob-Trot Software has its own software development department, but no special knowledge of software localization. That is why we used MULTILIZER®´s automated localization method which turned out to replace traditional software localization engineering work and knowledge.

At the same time, we outsourced all translation work so that it was done parallel to the software engineering. The result was that all software localization work and testing for the first seven languages was completed in four (4) days. Adding support for the next five (5) languages was accomplished faster than that since the process was already familiar to us.

It was very important to us to guarantee data security during this process. With MULTILIZER®, we were able to create package files containing only the translation tool and language data to be translated. Just these easy-to-use self-extracting set-up files were sent to the translation agency. Although the source code was used in the globalization process, it was kept in secure way inside our company all the time.

Business Benefits Achieved

Because of the worldwide demand for mobile services, WinWAP serves a global market. However, WAP service users require to be served in their own language so local language support is needed. Today, the WinWAP product is enabled for international sales and distribution in more than 12 countries, and more will come.

Our estimate is that with MULTILIZER®, we achieved at least three (3) months faster Time-to-Global-Market. If we had not found a corresponding solution we would have had two choices. We either would have outsourced the whole project (with all the data security risks involved), or we would have needed to develop the corresponding globalization technology as part of the WinWAP product. The former was not possible because of the tight schedule, and the latter would have taken us outside our focus area.

With MULTILIZER®, we also saved the amount of software engineering work that would have been required when adding support for 12 languages. It was crucial that we could use these saved engineering resources for our core development work.

Future Plans

MULTILIZER® is an innovative and scalable software globalization product. Software globalization support for multiple target platforms - PC, mobile, and Internet - enables us to globalize our future products in different technical environments with the same technology. This results in enhanced productivity and lower transaction costs. In addition, translations provided in earlier products can be effectively re-used in all future projects.

Because of the positive results of this first globalization project for one platform (Windows), I can say that in the future Slob-Trot Software will use MULTILIZER® Software Globalization FrameworkT in all software globalization projects where Time-to-Global-Market is critical."