As computing environments become more heterogeneous, software portability becomes very important. ICU provides robust, full-featured Unicode services on a wide variety of platforms, without sacrificing performance. An open source project sponsored, supported, and used by IBM, ICU is providing robust, full-featured, commercial quality Unicode-based technologies. Supporting the most current version of the Unicode standard, including supplementary Unicode characters needed for support of the repertoires of GB 18030, HKSCS, and JIS X 0213, it offers great flexibility to extend and customize supplied services