Large enterprises are gearing up for global action, with the glacial pace of 2001-2003 toward international sales quickening like a millennial thaw. From our conversations with big companies, we see large-scale, business-wide globalization initiatives at brand powerhouses like Coca-Cola and FedEx. And suppliers have noticed:

• In early May SDL announced its Business Consulting unit to provide strategic guidance for enterprises faced with the information management challenges of reaching global markets. The unit has 20 consultants with access to "over 1000 highly-skilled service professionals across more than 50 offices in 30 countries, creating an unmatched pool of knowledge on GIM [global information management] services, technologies, processes and best practices."
• For the last year IBM’s Software group has been quietly building a globalization services practice. This isn’t the widely advertised Global Services unit which provides professional services around the world, but rather a service arm of the division responsible for building IBM software. This Software Services for WebSphere globalization team draws on the capabilities of the internal group that provides globalization expertise to IBM product teams. The new Services group numbers around 350 people responding to customer requests for international development, mostly on the web. The business unit manager told us that "IBM customers expect full solutions from IBM, including globalization." This echoes our constant theme that globalization is another business issue, but one with enormous scalability implications.

Of course, IBM and SDL do not field the only professional services groups that will help companies assess and build out their global information systems and websites. Every LSP will help, just as management consultancies, marketing agencies, user experience engineering firms, system integrators, independent research firms, and content management system vendors would (see "Design Practices for Global Gateways").