WORDPERFECT A COREL PRODUCT
By Adnews Staff
Ottawa-based Corel Corp. has taken another big step on the growth-by-acquisition trail. The Canadian company, which started its success story with the graphics software CorelDRAW, has made a stock swap for U.S.-based Novell Inc.'s WordPerfect software. Corel, which took the Ventura desktop publishing software off the hands of Xerox Corporation in 1994, says it will license GroupWise client software and Envoy electronic publishing from Novell, and include them in WordPerfect's PerfectOffice suite. Corel president Michael Cowpland feels Novell, which is a specialist in networking software, has been lax in marketing WordPerfect. While sales of the word processing program have plummeted since it was bought by Novell in 1994, it still has 20 million users worldwide. Corel software is available in more than 17 languages in 60 countries. It says the deal with Novell will give it access to the latter's installed base of 55 million users. Corel spokesperson Kim Dixon said yesteday the Canadian company would give the same "aggressive" marketing push to WordPerfect it puts behind its other products. Handling all its marketing in-house, Corel advertises in computer magazines and has recently moved into national television in Canada and the U.S. It also does co-op advertising with retailers and catalogue marketers.