Lionbridge Says 150 Companies Now On Freeway (updated)

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Lionbridge issued a press release today that says the company’s new translation management platform, Freeway/Logoport, was the fastest-growing translation management tool in 2006. Freeway is the Web-based front-end of the application and Logoport is the translation memory engine (I’m still not quite sure why there are two names used). For the reason behind the two names, see below.

Here are some data points from the press release:

  • Logoport now has more than 10,000 individual users.
  • Logoport has seen average monthly production volume increase from 9 million words in January 2006 to 36 million in January 2007.
  • Logoport now hosts more than two and a half billion words within its many client translation memories.

There is a caveat to these growth numbers: the fact that Freeway/Logoport, is, well, free.

Nonetheless, these are very impressive numbers. Clearly, Lionbridge is providing a valuable service to clients and one that is being used at a blistering pace.

I would be interested in knowing how many of these 150 clients have been brought onboard solely due to Freeway/Logoport.

And now that the company has all of these clients using Freeway/Logoport, it will be also interesting to see if a machine translation component is added at some point this year and/or if we see companies beginning to share their translation memories to achieve even greater cost savings.

PS: I profiled Lionbridge Freeway in the July issue of Global by Design.

UPDATE: Kevin Bolen, CMO of Lionbridge, filled me in on two points that I raised in this post. First, the issue about using two names. Logoport is the name of the translation memory software platform that Lionbridge purchased and has since integrated into Freeway. Because there was already a base of Logoport users out there, Lionbridge decided to maintain the name while at the same time promoting the new Freeway name. However, looking ahead, it will be Freeway getting promoted and not Logoport. That should clear things up for prospective customers.

Second, regarding my question about how many of these 150 companies are existing customers vs. new customers, Kevin says the split is roughly 50/50, which is a positive sign. He says that Freeway is playing a key role in winning new business.

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John Yunker

John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.
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