In today's business climate, managing information across an enterprise has come to mean managing information across linguistic and cultural regions. The barriers that information systems have to overcome are no longer just variations in business applications from department to department—sharing data between sales and distribution, for example. Now you have the additional requirement of sharing data across a border with a neighboring country, with a corporation on the opposite side of the globe, or with an international corporation's offices located in the world's major cities.
Even if your development plans do not call for sharing data internationally—perhaps you are developing a stand-alone application to sell worldwide—your application must "translate" well into the many business and cultural contexts of the global marketplace.
There are several strategies that software developers can use to address the demands of worldwide deployment. The development of internationalized and localized applications has improved due to increased use of applications worldwide. The advantages and disadvantages are known. The common denominator for success is that these strategies involve thorough research and careful planning.
