SAP Business One 8.8 for Multinational Company: Russia, Brazil, China Notes

Normally if you are multinational corporation with headquarters in USA, Canada, UK, or Continental Europe, you would prefer to host all your Corporate ERP application servers in the Headquarters and expose your international accounting application via Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Server (decent internet bandwidth is a norm in most of the countries nowadays).  With previous versions of SAP BO you had to maintain at least two Servers, where you have SB1 A and SB1 B systems separated, however new version SAP Business One 8.8 allows you to have all international companies to be hosted on the same MS SQL Server.  We plan to expand number of Web Session demos and localized versions of SAP B1 presentations in such regions as Brazil and Russia.  This small publication should give you initial orientation:
1. In our US headquarters we deploy Microsoft Dynamics GP as our Corporate ERP.  Should we just create new company in GP for our Russian and Brazilian facilities?  We often hear these or similar questions.  The answer is - it depends.  Great Plains Dynamics was translated and partially localized for Russian ERP market by our company branch in Moscow in mid 1990th, however in earlier 2000th Microsoft Business Solutions announced Navision as good ERP option for Russia and CIS (later on Axapta was also localized for Russian accounting application market).  We also had a chance to work with Microsoft Business Solutions in Sao Paulo Brazil to localize and translate into Brazilian Portuguese Great Plains version 7.5, where MBS ended up with Dynamics AX Axapta and Dynamics NAV Navision.  So, as we see situation with small and mid-size Corporate ERP in both Russia and Brazil, SAP Business One should fit and we have numerous successful implementation examples, even with integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP in US Headquarters
2. Should we just translate few Dynamics GP screens into Russian, Portuguese or Chinese?  Corporate ERP localization typically includes two aspects: local language support and compliance to local legislations and tax code.  Even if you translate Great Plains screens into Russian, Portuguese (you cannot translate them into Chinese, as Microsoft Dexterity doesn't support Unicode - typically required for hieroglyph based alphabet, such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, however some hieroglyph data entry support is possible via NJ Star extensions) - American version of Dynamics GP will not comply with local Russian, Brazilian or Chinese legislation and accounting rules - American version of Dynamics GP will not comply with local Russian, Brazilian or Chinese legislation and accounting and taxation rules.  Localization (and getting so-called Certified with local Business Practice regulation authorities in foreign countries) makes SAP Business One Corporate ERP products line ready for foreign country implementation
3. Alternatives to SAP Business One in Russia.  You can ask a Quote for Microsoft Dynamics AX Axapta for your Russian subsidiary.  AX is very flexible and reasonably localized.  If you would prefer to be absolutely in synch with volatile Russian tax legislation, we recommend you to take a look at 1S Bukhgalteria (in Russian it is written as 1C).  SAP Business One or Axapta allow you to exercise tight internal audit control (in SB1 you can switch User Interface from Russian into English in a few seconds), where with 1C you will have to rely on your Russian controller to report you on the local situation
4. Alternatives to SB1 in Brazil.  On this market you have Microsiga as locally designed and supported Corporate ERP application.  However the points from paragraph #3 are applicable