The CAT tool market is heating up, which is good news for customers. Prices will definitely come down and the competition is guaranteed to drive CAT vendors to improve product quality, service and support. Lionbridge has announced its new, upcoming product offering Geoworx which can be seen here. 

The following is a direct quote from Nic McMahon, VP Technology Solutions at Lionbridge which was made on the LinkedIn Localization Professional group.

I think there is a side to this discussion that is missing – Trados while it certainly retains value is way behind the technology curve – it works and serves individual users working on individual jobs, requires a huge license fee, has terrible support (we are a customer too!!) and demands further expensive and challenging upgrade cycles every 3 years or so at a minimum. This discussion exist because of these facts. 

Support is rubbish at Trados because of the cost to administer and deliver an outdated platform. It takes ages to add new features and respond because the architecture is almost 20 years old. The product is far from a bad product – it is the standard and a monopoly – the problem is that it is just an old product. Like the US gas guzzlers – they still drive you around just fine – but they are far from being the most efficient or valuable way to get to the party. 

The base fact is that the world has moved on, we are 2.0 now!! Interactive collaboration on work for terms and leveraging, cloud-based, shared, real-time TMs and Glossaries, SaaS based low monthly fees and infrastructure that allow translators to work on low powered netbooks with a regular low impact upgrade cycles on demand for all users – it is a no brainer for TM 2.0. 

As with all monopolies they ultimately fall victim to a lack of competition and while Trados still easily pays for its self – it is a techno culdesac that is overripe for a competitive wake up call. 

Definitely check out XTM, Heartsome and MemoQ – but Lionbridge will be entering the fray too – so add www.geoworkz.com to your competitive understanding and research. It is the last Trados upgrade you will ever need ;-)

Related posts:

  1. SDL Trados. Is it worth the money?