Lionbridge Launches Freeway 2.0; Delivers Industry’s First Web-Architected Software-as-a-Service Platform for Global Clients and Translators
Free to Lionbridge clients and translators, Freeway 2.0 delivers web-based language asset management, collaboration and workflow features to maximize translation efficiency and accelerate clients' global time to market
Waltham, Mass, April 25, 2006 - Lionbridge Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: LIOX) today introduced Freeway 2.0™, the world's first, fully web-architected language collaboration platform. Freeway brings together the critical elements of a global enterprise translation program into a single on-demand, free application available to Lionbridge clients and translation partners. Using Freeway, local project management, in-country translation and reviews, offshore engineering, and quality control are now all managed real-time in an easily accessible web platform.
Using a secure login, clients, Lionbridge personnel, and translators can access their Freeway environment via a web browser in any one of 17 available languages. Once inside they can initiate projects, upload and download language assets, manage glossaries and translation memories (TMs), and track the status of a single project or their entire program history. Freeway can be configured in minutes for any user with no limitation on the number of "seats," and without any deployment costs.
All language assets can be imported and exported using industry standard formats allowing for quick start engagements that maximize reuse and ensure consistency. For even faster turnaround, Freeway can be connected via web services to in-house and leading content solutions from EMC Documentum, Interwoven, Microsoft, Oracle, CrownPeak, and Vasont Systems, providing a fully automated workflow cycle from creation to global publishing.
"For nearly 20 years, the translation industry has paid annual license fees for desktop-based software tools to manage translation memories. However, the speed with which global applications, products and content of all types are developed today is placing tremendous pressure on the localization industry, forcing us to think in new directions," said Rory Cowan, CEO, Lionbridge. "The old hour glass, department-level approach to translation has become a critical roadblock to global product delivery. Because of its open access, Freeway 2.0 now enables enterprise-level coordination and leverage of linguistic assets, unlocking additional savings and accelerating the overall production cycle for our clients. With no license or maintenance fees, we expect our clients to rapidly adopt Freeway as their primary language management platform."
Freeway 2.0: Dynamic Features for the Global Enterprise
Freeway provides clients, translation partners, and Lionbridge linguistic teams and offshore engineers with the collaborative and connectivity elements required to thrive in an on-demand environment. Working within Freeway 2.0 offers participants a variety of benefits over traditional desktop or department-level support tools:
Improved Productivity Across Extended Global Team - Localization today involves many parties: in-house teams, project managers, translators, engineers, QA resources and in-country reviewers. Freeway provides each with a single, secure online workspace to coordinate their efforts and share information in real-time. Clients can submit projects, track status, obtain reports and share knowledge with their team members and Lionbridge. Lionbridge project managers can immediately transfer files, update TMs and glossaries in real-time, submit queries and track bugs. Translators can see the full context of the project and chat with one another using instant messaging to self-align their translations for greater consistency. In-country reviewers can view the source and translation side-by-side, track corrections, and make comments for inclusion into the final TM.
Maximum Leverage from TMs and Glossaries - At the heart of Freeway is Logoport, Lionbridge's advanced language asset management system. Logoport stores enterprise translation memories and glossaries in a secure, central repository enabling efficient management and sharing of linguistic assets across products, divisions, and functional groups. For instance, a marketing team can "network" their TMs with those from the product development group, increasing the likelihood of a matched segment and reducing the volume and associated cost of retranslating content. Clients can also import and export up-to-date TMs and glossaries using industry standard formats ensuring an easy transition onto Freeway.
Large and Small Client Teams Benefit from On-demand Scale and Support - Freeway brings the latest advances in the "software-as-a-service" deployment model to the language services industry. Developed as an on-demand, web-based platform, Freeway enables clients to begin projects of any size, at any time. Its web-based architecture also means that all users have instant access to all functions. Now, individual departments or small enterprises have access to the same robust language support technology as those teams with large annual budgets. New features are available immediately upon release to all users with no downloads, no upgrade fees, and no compatibility issues. Additional resources can be added to project teams in minutes with access to all legacy materials to assist them in learning current requirements.
Easy Integration via Web Services - Utilizing native web services capabilities, Freeway can seamlessly integrate into clients' existing development and publication processes. Customers simply flag content for translation in their content management system and it is automatically exported to Lionbridge for processing. When the translation is completed, the content is automatically imported back into the client system for publishing. Over the past four years, Freeway's core technology has proven its ability to connect easily via Web Services to a wide variety of in-house and leading third party solutions including EMC Documentum, Interwoven, Microsoft, Oracle, CrownPeak and Vasont Systems.
Flexible Workflow - After over 10 years and hundreds of thousands of projects, Lionbridge understands each client has unique needs, and as such, our support platform must accommodate these different approaches to localization management and production. Freeway therefore incorporates the capabilities of Metastorm, a leading third-party Business Process Management solution. With Metastorm assemblies and project components, our project managers can tailor a production model based on each clients' requirements. Steps like in-country reviews can be added or deleted, assigned, and even initiated automatically within Freeway.
Freeway 2.0: A Proven Heritage
Freeway 2.0 is built on two proven production technologies: the Logoport™ linguistic engine and Lionbridge's advanced collaboration portal. Through these legacy systems, hundreds of active clients have experienced the benefits of our "1.0" feature set. Their views and feedback served as the foundation upon which we re-architected our platform to create Freeway 2.0.
Since its deployment in mid-2005, the Logoport engine has managed the translation of more than 140 million words for over 70 clients worldwide. This volume is on track to double in 2006 with nearly 5,000 users engaged, including client teams, Lionbridge professionals, and translation partners. Even with thousands of concurrent users accessing the system via the web, Logoport's response time averages just a few hundredths of a second with 99.999% availability.
All members of the project team work from the clients' controlled TMs and glossaries, enabling us to engage more translators on a single project without any degradation of quality or productivity. Before Logoport, a lack of consistency and TM alignment meant that adding more personnel actually degraded performance due to the extra time required to edit and reconcile TMs, limiting teams to four or five translators. Now, linguistic teams can expand as needed to meet deadlines. For example, on a recent project Lionbridge brought together over 20 translators for each language pair and coordinated their concurrent activity through Logoport with no impact to consistency or need for supplemental editing.
"Having a presence in more than 60 countries requires that our products and processes be aligned to support global product delivery," said Martha Westland, program manager, Adaptive Server Enterprise, Sybase. "Lionbridge's systems put the translation review process online making it readily available to everyone, shortening the critical language review cycle. Combined with a centralized translation memory, Lionbridge enables us to rapidly localize our products and the supporting materials to broaden our global reach and ensure a high-quality customer experience."
The portal technology within Freeway is also derived from years of market experience. Lionbridge's portal solution has been in active use since 1999 and has managed over one million projects in that time. Freeway takes the best of that functionality and expands it dramatically, opening up many new features and exposing more of our production environment to our clients.
"Using Lionbridge's portal technology for project submission and collaboration with the project manager and the team, we are able to speed up the translation process and ensure that our global product releases are fully supported in all languages," said David Ward, CRM manager, Nikon. "This improves our customers' satisfaction and drives faster product adoption around the world."
Freeway 2.0 is available today for Lionbridge clients and translators. To learn more or to request an account, please visit www.lionbridge.com/freeway.
About Lionbridge
Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: LIOX) is a leading provider of globalization and testing services. Lionbridge combines global resources with proven program management methodologies to serve as an outsource partner throughout a client's product and content lifecycle -- from development to globalization, testing and maintenance. Global organizations in all industries rely on Lionbridge services to increase international market share, speed adoption of global products and content, and enhance their return on enterprise applications and IT system investments. Based in Waltham, Mass., Lionbridge maintains 50 solution centers in 25 countries and provides services under the Lionbridge and VeriTest brands. To learn more, visit www.lionbridge.com.
Supporting Quotes
Leading companies in all industries around the world are utilizing the Lionbridge's services and technology platform in their translation efforts.
Bentley Systems, Inc.
"Lionbridge has helped us kick-start our localization operations more than 12 years ago, and has supported our growth from 10 localized releases annually to over 250, while slashing costs and reducing turnaround."
--John Papaioannou, Senior Localization Manager
Ryanair.com
"Lionbridge's Freeway portal is providing a key service in communicating with a wide and diverse customer community throughout Europe. Over 98% of all our ticket sales are purchased on the Web, and a significant percentage of these are purchased by non-English speaking customers. It is vital that translated information be accurate and timely, and Lionbridge does this for us consistently. Another key benefit is that Lionbridge offers us a single connection point for translation and Web management so we do not have to spend time and money working with different suppliers for different languages."
--Dara Brady, Manager, Advertising and Ryanair.com
Nikon
"As we bring products to an expanding European market, maintaining quality and uniformity of process - regardless of market size and local capability - is a key issue. To operate in a truly global manner, the procedures that support localization and the resulting product communications have to keep pace to ensure a consistent, high-quality consumer experience."
--David Ward, CRM Manager
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Lionbridge, Logoport, and Freeway are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. in the US and throughout the world. All other brand and product names contained herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements, including statements relating to market, customer and translation partner acceptance and use of Freeway 2.0™, the expected benefits of use (including cost savings, quality and productivity improvements) to Lionbridge, its customers and translation partners, expected growth in the number of Freeway users, and the expected impact of Freeway on Lionbridge's future performance. Lionbridge's actual experiences and results may differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such a difference include the timing and speed of customer and user acceptance of Freeway; complexity in customer source material and technologies; customer delays or postponements of services using Freeway; the failure of Freeway to keep pace with technological changes or changing customer needs; risks of economic downturns generally, and in the information technology and software industries specifically; and risks associated with competition in general and competing technologies specifically; and Lionbridge's ability to expand user adoption of Freeway. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with Lionbridge, please refer to Lionbridge's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2006.