Corel is cozying up to small business by marketing a value-priced productivity suite catered to the needs of organizations with fewer than 50 PCs. Corel says it is targeting small businesses with the applications that they must have and nothing more.

The suite, named WordPerfect Office 12 - Small Business Edition, contains the newly minted WordPerfect Mail client and security software from Symantec.

Brought to market in April of 2004, WordPerfect 12 is not far removed from Microsoft Office. WordPerfect bundles most of the components enshrined in customers' expectations for a productivity suite, including word processing, spreadsheets, photo editing, presentations, document templates, and contact management.

The suite has an amendable user interface that can adjust to custom designs, or clone the layout of Microsoft Office applications.

Corel also provides a component called Task Manager as the starting point for interacting with the suite. Business templates have been integrated for document creation and Web services provide access to Corel's Small Business portal. The Small Business portal contains business advice, additional templates and relevant offers from Corel business partners.

To ensure baseline compatibility with Office, Corel has included Microsoft Office file support and compatibility toolbars. However, Corel has not limited its support to Microsoft's document formats; WordPerfect users have the option to publish documents in PDF or XML.

A new addition to the suite, WordPerfect Mail is an e-mail and shared calendaring application that comes equipped with message search capabilities, spam detection and RSS feeds. A special edition of Norton Internet Security 2005 adds antivirus, firewall, privacy and anti-spam capabilities. Customers receive a free 90-day subscription to receive updates from Symantec.

"WordPerfect Office 12 - Small Business Edition provides a huge value for entrepreneurs who need to look professional in everything they do, but don't want to be technology or design experts," said Richard Carriere, general manager for office productivity at Corel.

Corel has issued targeted SKUs of WordPerfect in the past, such as WordPerfect Office 12 Student and Teacher Edition, providing educational and non-profit organizations with more flexible licensing terms. Corel has credited its licensing program and strength of its feature set as the primary reasons for overcoming objections and winning a 50,000 seat contract with the United States Department of Justice. Microsoft was formerly the DOJ's preferred vendor.

Upgrade versions of WordPerfect Office 12 - Small Business Edition have an estimated retail price of $179 USD, with the full version costing $349 USD. The suite is available directly from Corel or through aligned resellers in the U.S. and Canada.