AOL Case Study

Translation Management System (TMS) Market Changes

Following the news that their existing translation management system, Idiom Worldserver, was going to be made 'end of life' and no longer supported, AOL carried out a detailed review of the translation management software market, focusing on the large scale applications capable of providing a robust environment with support for a wide variety of content types across many differing process combinations.

Welocalize participated in this process, helping AOL understand how they could use GlobalSight to efficiently manage their localization process. Having identified GlobalSight as a possible solution, Welocalize then worked with AOL through a number of Localization workshops to understand their specific needs and how they would need a tailored solution to support their well defined localization process.

Some of the development efforts identified during this process included: support for hierarchical translation memories, increased leveraging by using the string ID's of properties files and a fully automated connection to their in house content repository, CVS.

Choosing GlobalSight

AOL's decision to select GlobalSight as their translation management system was driven not just by the fact that as an open source product their efforts were protected in the future and the source code was always going to be available to them, but also by the fact that Welocalize already had a team of developers actively expanding the functionality of the system, and also that Welocalize was able to provide a fully supported solution, with a managed helpdesk and follow-the-sun support, backed up by a defined Service Level Agreement.

Decision Making Factors

• Language Management – File types, translation, review, term database
• Maps to AOL Process
• Connectivity – CMS, CVS, MT, CrowdSourcing
• Time to Market
• Trusted services vendor
• OpenSource ‐ Low cost entry, flexibility, OS agnostic, potential
• Trados as desktop translation tool
• Industry standards TBX,TMX,SRX,XLiff
• Multiple vendor strategy

Migration to GlobalSight

AOL engaged the Welocalize Professional Services team, who documented a detailed custom development and delivery plan, which included detailed deliverables and success criteria for each stage of the process. On completion of the development effort, all elements of the system were put through a rigorous set of tests to confirm functionality. In addition, the Welocalize Professional Services team worked with the technology group at AOL to define the hardware architecture for the system, including development, staging and live environments, with failover within the live environment.

The Welocalize team worked with the AOL engineers to document and configure the system, importing all the accumulated AOL assets such as translation memories and glossaries. Welocalize also configured the user base, including multiple vendors and provided training services for users across all the functionality of GlobalSight. Once configured, AOL ran a representative pilot project through the system from end to end to ensure all components of GlobalSight worked as planned. Based on a successful pilot the system has now been fully implemented in the live environment and AOL have been able to cancel support and development services on their old system. Over the next few months all work will be routed through GlobalSight, allowing AOL to retire their old system completely.

Implementation Solution

• Phase I – Proof of Concept/Identify key requirements
  • Mapping to AOL Process
  • Document new custom development requirements
  • CVS integration
  • TM Precedence
  • SID
• Phase II – Acceptance testing
  • TM Import Leverage
  • Test all file types
  • Test custom development features
• Phase III –Live Install
  • Pilot project
  • Training translators, admins, reviewers
• Engaged Welocalize Professional Services
  • Documentation is key:
    • SOW for rollout and support contract
    • Document hardware specs
    • Document Custom development requests
    • Document Install phases with acceptance criteria at each stage
    • Document training material
• Transparent help desk
  • Access to WeLocalize service desk for GlobalSight bug tracking
• Run pilot
  • Map end to end process validation
  • Translators online/offline
  • Quality
  • Reviewers
  • Admins
  • Project managers
• 3 Application servers
  • Staging server
  • Live server
  • Failover server
• 2 Databases
  • Live server
  • Failover server
  • Keep development server for testing upgrades

Initial TMS Setup

GlobalSite Setup