Here's the latest editorial from COREL MAGAZINE.
Good overview on effort to focus company IMHO.
Road to Recovery
Corel takes steps to narrow its focus
For a while there, I thought Corel was afflicted with the same disease I have: the sickness that
makes you find everything you can and keep everything you find, a k a Pack Rat's disease, with
the latent symptoms of scatterbraininess and one hand never knowing what the other is doing.
While I can't find a cure for myself, Corel has entered a 12-step recovery program, the goal
being to focus the company mind. "Hi, my name is Corel, and I'm out of focus."
Even before its defining acquisition of WordPerfect and associated business software from
Novell in January 1996, Corel has been on a fast and furious spending spree. The company
seemed to be buy, buy, buying and licensing everything it could get its hands on. And then those
symptoms appeared and seemingly spread throughout the company body. It was time to do
some soul searching and take the first steps toward recovery. It was time to clean house. Though
some of these moves won't directly affect Corel's graphics products or their users, as a whole
they will tighten Corel's focus on its core products, its desktop and Web publishing software.
In March, Corel took the first step by announcing plans to spin off its Corel Video and Network
Computing groups into a new company called Corel Computer Corp. As a wholly owned
subsidiary of Corel Corp. (at least initially), the spinoff will offer corporate video conferencing,
communications, and other network computing solutions.
In April, Corel successfully completed step 2 (which anyone who has entered a 12-step program
will tell you is one of the toughest). Corel announced April 7 that it has agreed to sell its CD
Home Collection to I. Hoffmann + Associates Inc., a multimedia company in Toronto. The sale
includes more than 60 CD-ROM titles, mostly games and edutainment software, including Corel
ChemLab, the biggest seller in the collection. (I guess Terry Bradshaw's football game is gone for
good; I never did get my hands on that one.) H + A will also have non-exclusive distribution
rights to Corel's individual Professional Photos CD titles and 10-pack collections.
So Corel has narrowed its scope. Corel President and CEO Michael Cowpland said, "Our
strategic vision is to move forward in pursuing our interests in the field of productivity application
and graphics software and the vast opportunities presented by the Java-based operating system."
He said these steps will allow Corel "to place better focus on our flagship Corel WordPerfect
and CorelDraw products." Hurray, and congratulations.
These first big moves are sure to be followed by little steps of tweaking the company's
development and marketing strategies. In fact, Corel has already outlined its general development
goals for CorelDraw 8 and its components.
These goals include better integration among existing modules; more power and precision for the
professional or high-end user; improved usability by streamlining existing and new controls and
making them more consistent throughout the package; and enhanced performance -- speed.
There are more, but we are prohibited from disclosing them this early in the development cycle.
The engineering process being driven by these criteria is that any potential revision or new feature
must address as many of these goals as possible. General goals to be sure, but ones that, if done
successfully, will be savored by every user.
So it is with happy regret that I say farewell to a fellow pack rat. Corel is on its way to a place
where things make sense and one hand helps the other. I, on the other hand, am off to look for ...
D. Scott Campbell |
