1--- 2layout: default 3title: ICU 4nav_order: 300 5has_children: true 6--- 7<!-- 8© 2020 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others. 9License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html 10--> 11 12# Introduction to ICU 13 14As companies integrate e-commerce on a global scale into their fundamental 15business processes, their prospective customers, established customers, and 16active partners can take advantage of increased revenue and decreased expenses 17through software internationalization. They also can improve customer 18communications and increase savings. 19 20## Meeting the Challenge of Globalization 21 22In today's business climate of globalization, companies must compete in a new 23Internet-enabled business climate of constant change and compressed time frames. 24Their customers expect reliable service and support. 25 26## Taking Advantage of Internationalized Software 27 28Companies need to establish a better linkage between their global business 29processes and the underlying supportive IT processes. If they want to deliver 30this new flexibility and agility, they must depend on the software 31internationalization process. 32 33The software internationalization development process uses libraries (such as 34the International Components for Unicode (ICU) libraries), to enable one single 35program to work with text in any language for any place in the world. For 36example, instead of having separate software versions for ten different 37countries, the ICU services can create one version that works seamlessly and 38transparently in all of them. 39 40The ICU components are an integral part of software development because they 41hide the cultural nuances and technical complexities of locale-specific software 42requirements. These complexities provide critical functionality for 43applications, but the application developer does not need to exert a huge effort 44or incur high costs to build them. 45 46## Justifying the Investment 47 48The business case needed to justify the investment in software 49internationalization is compelling when the investment is amortized over a 50number of projects. In the fast-paced and rapidly-evolving world of traditional 51and evolving e-businesses, these international components provide a firm ground 52on which companies, partners and suppliers can build their business 53transactions. They can share competitive information to help gain a significant 54economic advantage. 55 56The ICU services deliver proven value by lowering the cost required to integrate 57with disparate applications, systems and data sources on a regional and global 58scale. It provides value to a company's IT investment by lowering IT complexity, 59risk, maintenance costs and training costs. It also enhances organizational 60flexibility, leverages 61existing assets, and improves planning and decision-making. It enables 62organizational learning, process-driven synchronization, event-driven evaluation 63and decision-making. 64 65## Background and History of ICU 66 67ICU was originally developed by the Taligent company. The Taligent team later 68became the Unicode group at the IBM® Globalization Center of Competency in 69Cupertino. The team has received significant input from the open source 70community worldwide. 71 72Java™ classes developed at Taligent were incorporated into the Java Development 73Kit (JDK) 1.1 developed by Sun® Microsystems. The classes were then ported to 74C++ and later some classes were also ported to C. The classes provide 75internationalization utilities for writing global applications in C, C++, or 76Java programming languages. 77 78ICU for Java (ICU4J) includes enhanced versions of some of these classes, plus 79additional classes that complement the classes in the JDK. C and C++ versions of 80the same international functionality are available in ICU for C (ICU4C). The 81APIs differ slightly due to language differences and new functionality. For 82example, ICU4C includes a character converter API. 83 84ICU4J and ICU4C keep the same development goals. They both track additions to 85the Java internationalization APIs and implement the latest released Unicode 86standard. They also maintain a single, portable source code base. 87 88All of us in the ICU and open source group appreciate the time you are taking to 89understand our technology. We have put our best collective effort into these 90open components, and look forward to your questions, comments and suggestions. 91 92## Downloading ICU 93 94Download ICU in one of the following ways: 95 961. From the download page, <https://icu.unicode.org/download>, for 97 packaged stable releases of ICU. 98 992. From the source code repository, <https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/>, 100 for the latest development versions. 101 102After downloading, see the included README file for information on what is 103included, building, installing, etc. 104 105## ICU License 106 107Current license: <https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/blob/main/icu4c/LICENSE> 108 109See also FAQ section ["How is the ICU licensed"](icufaq/index#how-is-icu-licensed) 110