SDL Goes Shopping Again

By Stephen Powers

SDL announced today that it has acquired fellow global information management services vendor Idiom Technologies. Both SDL and Idiom sell software and services to help organizations manage global content. This marks the second significant acquisition for SDL in less than a year; last year SDL got into the Web content management business with its purchase of Tridion.

What does this mean from a Web content management standpoint? If you're an existing SDL or Idiom customer, there will be some changes coming down the pike as SDL attempts to "combine SDL's and Idiom's technology solutions to provide better efficiencies of scales and shared intellectual property" (SDL's words, not mine, from this morning's press release). If your organization has a Tridion implementation integrated with Idiom, this announcement should be good news for you: tighter integration between the two systems is likely to follow. But if you're using Idiom with a non-SDL Web content management system (i.e., anything but Tridion), then keep an eye on your WCM vendor's preferred global translation services partner(s) — these vendors could be less than thrilled about partnering with a company that has essentially become the competition, and may more aggressive in seeking out partnerships for integration with non-SDL companies, such as Lionbridge.

Stay tuned.