Testing Localized Applications

By Peter Piela

September 13, 2004

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The future of business is global, and businesses that do not globalize will be unable to tap the bulk of impending user growth, particularly online. However, for many organizations, globalization is the multi-step process of adapting Web sites or software applications to meet the needs of a multi-cultural, multi-lingual user base. Additionally, most American businesses have highly-evolved development processes but have not given any serious thought to the work necessary to reach an international audience.

While the U.S. was the early Internet and technology leader, the rest of the world is catching up. For example, in 1999, 45 percent of all online users were from North America. According to Jupiter Research, by 2005, North American users will account for only 27 percent of the online population, nearly matched by Western Europe (21 percent) and surpassed by Asia (30 percent). Businesses that do not globalize will be unable to tap the bulk of future user growth and will find it hard to retain their current partners and customers in this new world-wide market.

With an increasingly diverse and distributed user base, globalization is not merely a way to reach new customers. It is mandatory to maintain existing customers. American companies expanding into new markets will require global support for current software licenses, as well as for new purchases. Businesses that ignore this imperative will lose not only future customers or partners, but also current ones who are working to become global themselves.

With that said, globalization can be broken into three main phases: internationalization, localization and verification/production. Business executives cannot be expected to be globalization experts. They must, however, take an active lead in overall quality management of globalization efforts, and this requires a combination of strong project management and a powerful, flexible automated test tool. In the descriptions below, the term "client business" is used to refer to the company that "owns" the application or web site being globalized.

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