Pay Pal
1. One of the challenges that PayPal faces now that they have managed to overcome the polylingual obstacle is finding the best way to put this functionality in the hands of the business, so that they do not have to go through IT each time. How do you balance this need for responsiveness and flexibility versus IT’s need to keep some degree of control to make sure everything keeps working with everything else? Provide some recommendations to managers who find themselves in this situation. 2. PayPal opted to deviate from industry standards and build their own custom technology that would better suit their needs. When is it a good idea for companies to take this alternative? What issues factor into that decision? Provide a discussion and some examples. 3. Although the new system has been quite successful, Pay-Pal has chosen not to license this technology to others, forgoing a potentially important revenue stream given the lack of good solutions to this problem. Why do you think PayPal chose not to sell this technology? Do you really think this can be made into a strategic advantage over their competitors? How easy would it be for their competitors to imitate this accomplishment?
When you're a global company that keeps expanding into new countries, how do you keep all of your consumer sites updated in the local language—without spending a ton of time and money?
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CIO.com's E-Business Section PayPal realized five years ago that it had to solve this problem or that it would hinder the e-commerce payment company's ability to grow, says Matthew Mengerink, the companyâ¬"s vice president of core technologies whose IT responsibilities include PayPal's architecture and payment system infrastructure.
Today, PayPal has re-architected the software code for its site to allow simultaneous refreshes for 15 locales ranging from France to Poland. In the development community, they call this unusual achievement "polylingual simultaneous shipping" or "SimShip."