Ensuring business systems support Unicode characters can ease entry for U.S. companies into global markets. Who is doing it: Adoption of Unicode—a software standard for representing characters in most of the world’s alphabets—is far from universal in enterprise applications, says Mark Davis, president of the Unicode Consortium. Hewlett-Packard recently added Unicode support to its Trim records management software as it prepared to launch the product in Asia and in Russia. Without it, says Patrick Eitenbichler, a director of worldwide product marketing for HP, “it would be far more difficult to get started in those markets.” How it works: Without Unicode, you can’t spell a foreign customer’s name correctly or accurately integrate your global databases. Writing software that incorporates Unicode is simple enough: most major programming languages support it. But Davis says that unless you ask your developers or vendors for it, you may get ASCII encoding, which covers only basic English. Growth potential: As more English-centric businesses enter foreign markets, they want Unicode-compliant software, says Bill Sullivan, director of globalization and translation for IBM. But there’s a long way to go. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey admits that his company doesn’t offer a Chinese-language version of the service because most cell phone makers don’t yet support Unicode, limiting Twitter’s ability to send messages to mobile devices. —Joab Jackson Related content brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems, Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing feature 10 business intelligence certifications and certificates to advance your BI career From BI analysts and BI developers to BI architects and BI directors, business intelligence pros are in high demand. Here are the certifications and certificates that can give your career an edge. By Thor Olavsrud Dec 01, 2023 8 mins Certifications Business Intelligence IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe