Of course there is, but sometimes you'd never know it given the single-minded emphasis on the US (and sometimes Canada, which gets treated as "America-north") in the media relations stuff coming out of the technology vendors. I was thinking about this because today I found a European-centric press release from WebEx picked up by an international portal site (Finextra.com). I think it's very important for the vendors to pursue the international market. Remote communications across boundaries are in their infancy, but the shrinking world view and multinational commerce makes them ever more important. Look at the entry I made about the president's State of the Union address. The State Department is going to make the speech available in eleven languages. Think they're doing that to support the importance of multilingual communications within the US? Not hardly, brother.
I have helped several clients with marketing and internal training webinars targeted at international audiences. One of the problems we often run into is how to effectively run the audio side of things. I still get a frustrating number of audio conference vendors who say that the people overseas can just dial a US number to join in. Nobody is going to pay for a one-hour call to America in order to hear a pitch! Audio vendors need to set up easier and more integrated networks of toll free or local numbers in major business and commerce centers around the world. VOIP (audio over the internet) is growing in acceptance, but still presents problems with areas that have slower or more congested networks and bandwidth, or typically work in open environments where computer sounds would be disruptive.
A vendor concentrating on these aspects to produce a smooth multinational communications experience is going to have a big leg up on the competition.
