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 The future of trust—no more playing catch up Broadcom: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT By Eric Chien, Director of Security Response, Symantec Enterprise Division, Broadcom Mar 31, 2023 5 mins Security BrandPost TCS gives Blackhawk Network an edge with Microsoft Cloud In this case study, Blackhawk Network’s Cara Renfroe joins Tata Consultancy Services’ Rakesh Kumar and Microsoft’s Nilendu Pattanaik to explain how TCS transformed the gift card company’s customer engagement and global operati By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Cloud Computing IT Leadership BrandPost How TCS pioneered the ‘borderless workspace’ with Microsoft 365 Microsoft’s modern workplace solution proved a perfect fit for improving productivity and collaboration, while maintaining security of systems and data. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Microsoft Cloud Computing BrandPost Supply chain decarbonization: The missing link to net zero By improving the quality of global supply chain data, enterprises can better measure their true carbon footprint and make progress toward a net-zero business ecosystem. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 2 mins Retail Industry Supply Chain Green IT 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