RSSInterview: Corel on Sun, Open Standards
By Ed Oswald | Published October 18, 2005, 6:00 PM
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BetaNews: That leads into our next question. Your company was one of the founding members of the committee. What happens if Corel sees a market for it? How long would it take to implement OpenDocument in WordPerfect?
Richard Carriere: Well, this is where I would like to have a crystal ball; I'm really not sure. At this point, this is one of the avenues where the market could go, but is it where it will go? I'd like to be the one who has this answer.
The biggest problem you have when you create new file formats is what do you do with all the legacy formats? What do you do with the fact that people -- whether its consumers, small businesses, or enterprises -- take a cycle of three to five years before changing their hardware and software? You can't just turn on a switch and turn off the other one. And our approach at Corel has always been to support whatever standards are relevant, and make sure we support people who are in a changing world.
So in that sense, we will welcome broader adoption of open standards, whether its ODF, XML, or other formats like PDF, but I don't want to predict when it will happen. The market has been dominated by Microsoft-dictated standards for quite a while, and we've been supporting these formats and our compatibility has been praised very often in the press as being the best alternative. I don't see why it would change when and if other formats become broad standards.
BN: But Massachusetts recently made an announcement to standardize on OpenDocument. Do you think that's the beginning of ODF becoming something bigger than it has been in the past - when it was a good idea, but no real practical application?
RC: We replied back to the CIO of Massachusetts when he asked for comments. We are supporting emerging standards, and we're supporting the state of Massachusetts' interest in going to open standards, because it levels the playing field for competitors. Then the users will judge on the sheer quality of the product.
But their announcement was just the beginning as far as I'm concerned. It was not an announcement that they would go with one open standard by "X" date, it was more: "Well, going forward we want to invest in software that supports open standards," with open standards yet to be defined. Is it ODF? Is it going to be exchanging documents in PDF? Is it going to be something else? Is it even going to be a proprietary format that is open and licensed for free to the various players? That is purely speculative at this point.
BN: Does Corel feel confident that you can compete with Microsoft Office, not only in business but on the consumer front as well?
RC: This is where we have to be careful in talking about "competing" with Microsoft. We are offering a choice to anyone in the market who wants an alternative to Microsoft Office. In recent years, we've held around 60 to 80 percent of that market for alternatives, and we expect that to continue in the consumer, small business and enterprise space - particularly in the government and legal verticals where we are very strong.
But you'd laugh at me if I pretended to go head-to-head, face-to-face against Microsoft, which has billions of dollars of revenue and profits in that market. We'll be there for anyone who wants an alternative, and I believe more and more people want alternatives, so that’s good news.
BN: Do you think OpenOffice.org is helpful to Corel or more of a competitor?
RC: Well, I would say it's helpful that there is press around a product like OpenOffice, because it certainly turns on the light on the availability of alternatives. It's a non-supported free product that has been around for many, many years and still does not have any meaningful user base. Is it a competitor? I'm not sure.
The vast majority of consumers, small business and enterprise customers want software that is supported by someone. If tomorrow HP, Dell or Sony started shipping their machines with OpenOffice, who would answer the support calls? The economics would not make sense.
If you look at the only publicly discussed deployment of OpenOffice, with the city of Munich in Germany as of today having OpenOffice through a contract with IBM, they signed it knowing it would be more expensive than just upgrading their entire Microsoft Office infrastructure. But they still decided to go ahead for other reasons, and now two years after they made that announcement, what I'm hearing is the costs are going up. They are years from having fully deployed that solution, and at the end of the day, the economics are not there.
In that sense, I would say OpenOffice is not a serious alternative that is used in the market today. It's used in the labs, and we have copies just like any other company that's watching what's out there, but it's not used by real people or by real businesses.
BN: So what you're saying is the main drawback of a program like OpenOffice.org is a lack of a support structure? Because it's open source and free, it's "buyer beware?"
RC: Well, I think that is what's happening. If you have a problem with a printer driver or anything, whom are you going to call? You could go on the Internet and contact some community of engineering students who develop drivers in their dorm room. I'm sure people who are really, really tech savvy have always done these things, and that’s fine. But for the average customer you're much better off paying a reasonable price to a well-established software vendor that develops a high quality product that would provide you support.
BN: What is the target market for WordPerfect? Are you going to try to move more into the consumer market?
RC: I would say we already have a strong base in the consumer market and the enterprise market -- especially in the government and legal segments -- and we continue to serve it and seek new growth opportunities there. This is how you see, for example, the Department of Justice last year renewed a 50,000-computer agreement for five years. You’re talking about an 8-digit deal overall, so we have some of these deals that won't go away because of the quality of our product, because of the value of our pricing, the flexibility of our licensing, and the quality of our support.
Where we've been successful recently to grow the business even faster is in the consumer and small business space. There are several reasons for that. One reason is consumers and value-conscious businesses are looking for PCs that are in the sub-$800 or sub-$500 price point, and when you pay that price for a PC, software cannot be 80-100% of the cost to build it.
If you want a value alternative to Microsoft, you can turn to us and you have a very high-quality and high-value alternative. So we've been very successful in doing that, both in the channel and with OEM. This is an area of growth. I would say we are competing in the value space, and we have a very strong position in the government vertical and also the enterprise space.
BN: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, Richard.
What I don't understand is, if they are so certain they have a better product
than MS Office, and are relying on OpenOffice.org to do most of the
market-making and ground-breaking groundwork for them, which would only leave
them in third or fourth position, neck-and-neck with Lotus SmartSuite, why they
don't do some of their own market-making and ground-breaking themselves.
This could be something as simple as releasing the source code for WordPerfect
5.1 (the DOS version) under some OSI approved license as a donation to the
FreeDOS folk, and use that to grab headlines. I mean, FreeDOS does make
headlines, even though it doesn't grab quite the same top billing as Linux - but
most techie publications would quite happily run a series of articles on such a
donation by Corel!
No news is bad news, even when you've got a competent product. It's when people
can identify you as a competitor that they'll take notice, and Corel has been
well off the radar for so long I'd thought they'd flown into Mt Erebus!
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|Richard Carriere seems like having a problem accepting that fact that open stadards are good, evnthough he knows it. Is it probably becuase there is MS money in Corel. I think time has come for them to say we support or don;t support.
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|I don't mind buying software if it's quality software. It's been at least a DECADE since Corel tabled quality software.
Their QA is a joke. I have met some of their former QA testers and they said they quit because they could not work in an environment where the mindset was "get it out the door and fix it later - we don't care what state it's in, Just Get It Out The Door". Such a statement makes the bugginess of Corel's software VERY understanble.
A case in point:
Paint Shop Pro 10.
The program gets released.
ONE WEEK LATER 10.01 is released - with a list of bug fixes as long as I am tall.
I wouldn't buy a Corel product with YOUR money.
Regarding the proliferation of so-called "open standards" in terms of office documents, MS owns the office market. Period. They and only they will determine what gets used there in terms of a document standard because they have FAR more inertia and market clout than a bunch of market share wannabes. All else is a pipe dream, much as the concept of a "free" OS dethroning Windows on the desktop will remain a pipe dream.
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|Free's no good, free's never good...buy, buy, buy.
Computing has suffered since it's inception from the inability to establish standards. Standardize the standard, then you can have different flavors.
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|Your choice of office suites boils down to the same choice as your choice of a pc: How are you going to use it? How many people actually use spreadsheets? Not many. Most people use these suites for document creation with some integration of presentation. It's the same overkill that you so often see in computer purchases. They spend $3000.00 for a pc and then use it for e-mail and web search. If people would look at their real needs something like Abiword is more than sufficient for what they do.
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|reason why hes speaking up is ooo is makeing head way in to the market so it will affect these guys hehehe
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|I've personally been getting people converted to OpenOffice. Seriously, how often will someone call an office suite for support? Anyway, I get on it and learn it, and if they have questions, they call me, someone they know. Then after a while, they will learn to be productive on it - and eventually it will be brought up when talking to their friends or family, and more people will have heard of it and more will be using it.
What's the real problem with Open Office? If you ask me, it's not sold in stores. We all want something right away, and we all know how to go to the store and buy something. Not everyone knows how to download things off the net, and then there are those with slow connections. Then finding the downloaded file isn't always as easy (if you don't know about the directory to save as) as popping in a cd and watch it work.
Also, Corel can't truely be excited about Open Documents. Less support will either make your product fail, or delay the other product that you don't support.
Free is the best kind of X - that's practially the motto in our house, after all, who can complain about something you have a choice to use for free? Use it, make suggestions, and or payup.
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|When you ask, "...who can complain about something you have a choice to use for free?", the answer is plenty. Pegasus Mail was an EXCELLENT program. The programmer offered his services for free, though we sent a donation. Several times he was ready to give up on Pegasus Mail b/c of all the crap he got from some users blasting him. The majority of us appreciated his efforts, but the moral of the story is some people will tell you off while they continue using your free product. Expect the same of some OpenOffice users.
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|- "we will welcome broader adoption of open standards, whether its ODF, XML, or other formats like PDF"
Did they realize that the more office suites will support one of them the faster this will happen, for the benefit of all alternatives suites ? (making those alternatives able to claim their openess againts vendor lock in, and their viability, ...).
And it could only be ODF: "XML" is nothing but a generic name, not an office document standard (ODF is XML, btw), pdf doesn't suite for spreadsheets and the like (think about equations).
So actually Corel want to play alone rather than joining the grouped front of alternatives office suites (both free, abiword, gnumeric, koffice, openoffice, and commercials like textmaker or staroffice).
It's unfortunate, since (they even aknowldged this on the interview) making alternatives strongers by alliance just help all of them. They said that the hype around staroffice benefits them, so what, why don't they go this way ?
They basically did got this interview only because of the ODF momentum, but be assured that the press won't cover them for a long time if they only have to say "we don't support it".
- Did RC released that ODF is actually XML ? he present them like exclusive formats
- To count them as "the second one", they only aknowledge the number of StarOffice sold. But did they realized that OpenOffice is basicaly the same product, and because it's free, is downloaded massively ?
clearly, they'll loose soon here, without even noticing what hapenned.
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|Corel today is nothing but a shell of what it was in the past - they are hardly a successful company!
Corel is a washout, full of promises but no delivery, remember Corel Linux and the Corel Java based office suit?
Then they suckled from the Microsoft teat ($135 million) and that was the end of Corel.
As a matter of fact Corel was delisted after it's stock value collapsed and was sold to Vector Capital for about $1 per share (chump change).
Since then Corel just more or less supports an every shrinking list of clients and customers.
Corel has heard of innovation, but that was in the past and they associate that word with FAILURE!
Corel is definately not a significant player, probably still has strong ties to Microsoft so can hardly be classified as an independant player.
Bar
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|The Corel people are quite wrong in their comments that ODT hasn't gained marketshare yet therefore is a failure. You'll pardon me for pointing out the obvious but Star Office 8 has only just been launched an OpenOffice.org v2.0 is not out of RC status yet, therefore how many enterprises will have standardized on it?
The whole point of ODT is that a large number of applications can read, *modify* and *write* files in this one standard format making the individual software package used less important. Corel are just scared that people will have no reason to buy their software now that competing software is free.
Maybe if Corel had pushed this movement they could have had a bigger part of the future, as is they seem like the last person across the finishing line in a marathon, complaining that they "could have been a contenda".
Damien
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|I am not a market analyst, but I am very sceptical about WordPerfect market share. I wish there were some hard numbers instead of unsubstantiated "clear number two" talk.
And please check the facts about Munich. They are using Debian, and OpenOffice, but not under any contract from IBM.
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|Comparing Wordperfect to Ms Office is very much like comparing a Ferrari to an Honda CIvic. Wordperfect was/is the innovator . It is the paragon and the simplest Office Suite to use . Market share !!! who cares.Simplicity, I care. For the ordinary consumer a document is just a document. You can dress is up , at the cost of 400 megabytes..but in the final analysis it is a mere document.. I hope OPEN OFFICE in whatever form reduces market share from Microsoft.Let them focus on producing a perfect Operating System and stay away from ancillary products
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|no support for ooo?
http://www.sun.com/servi...ort/software/openoffice/
http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html
http://support.openoffice.org/
riiight.
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|Nate,
Nobody would have to convert any ms-word documents if they switched to Corel WP, it can open them without issue. One thing I'd like to point out is that OpenOffice supports both an open standard XML format and also PDF files. Although, anyone who knows how to use PDFCreator (open source and totally free, http://sf.net/projects/pdfcreator/) can already make any printable document into a PDF file. Also Open Office can read mw-word documents too. Corel is scared in my opinion. They know that while OpenOffice isn't as user-friendly, it is completely free and about to release v2.0, which probably has them more scared than ever.
Cheers,
Christian
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|Being able to simply read them and opening documents with complex formatting are completely different. Sure, you may be able to read the content well, but it won't be exactly how you designed it initially. Those are the types of things businesses need to worry about. And what if you send a document to a customer in WordPerfect and they only have MS Word?
Corel has done a good job with compatibility and that's why they are still in business. But reverse-engineered compatibility isn't enough to convince people to switch document formats - there is a lot to take into consideration if you're running a business.
Corel thinks that it's okay to make millions, even if your competitor is making billions. If I were in their position, I'd probably be pretty happy too. Nothing wrong with having millions.
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|None of that will matter in a year or so...read that 'newsflash' below.
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|You honestly believe that?
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|I believe that it is very much possible...of course competition won't lay down and do nothing about it either. I think the real problem with 'that' is compatability. With sooo much being integrated together we both know it'll have several bugs in it--but I'm off topic even more now.
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|You said, "Sure, you may be able to read the content well, but it won't be exactly how you designed it initially. Those are the types of things businesses need to worry about."
Try opening an older Word file in a new version of Word. For that matter, try opening a current word file in a current copy of Word but with a different printer.
What ODF offers is the ability to actual know that you can open these files in years to come and know that you will be able to see it as you produced it, regardless of the tools you used or are using now.
It really is time to move to something better.
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|"Carriere says the market is ready for an MS Office alternative, that Microsoft doesn't innovate, and OpenOffice.org and the OpenDocument format aren't yet viable."
What a joke, and WordPerfect is also a joke and an embarrassment. Corel is a company that is content never to take the next step.
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|Newsflash Corel geniuses: http://www.tgdaily.com/2...ation_at_pdc/index.html
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|It bothers me that they are happy to be the #2. I as a consumer don't just want a generic alternative, I want something flat out better then the current market leader.
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|Well, Corel is #2 in terms of market share. They aren't saying WordPerfect is #2 in quality behind Microsoft Office. In fact, reading the interview it seems to me they believe their suite performs better than MS Office.
But obviously, you have to be realistic about the situation. People aren't just going to switch formats with the flick of a switch. Who has time to go convert thousands of old documents? I think that's why Corel is content with being #2, because they understand beating Microsoft in terms of share is probably impossible.
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|I, too, took that from this interview. Its like they have lost the fire and/or the guts to fight Microsoft.
Its a damn shame too, because WP used to be a top-notch office suite. Now you dont hear a thing from them anymore.
They at LEAST could have plugged an upcoming release, mentioned something they have brewing in the labs, made mention of some cool new features. SOMETHING. But instead it was a, "We just got more renewals, so our stuff cant be THAT bad." kind of attitude.
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|I tried Openoffice and was fairly impressed with its feature set and stability. Then I tried opening some Office 2000 .DOCs and .RTFs. It couldn't translate them properly, esp. when it came to embedded graphics. Corel knows what its talking about in this arena - its ALL about letting people wean themselves off the ol' standby, and beating MS at their own "embrace and extend" game. BTW, Wordperfect 9 opens those files I mentioned flawlessly.
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|I think this guy is clueless as to how the market is changing. Has it ever occurred to him that people who use openoffice.org don't want support? No one I know has used WordPerfect since maybe Novell's versions... we all have a copy simply because the crappy software came bundled with our machine or some hardware we bought. No one gives a crap about drivers either... that's what we have Microsoft for. He says "nobody exchanges files in ODF" which is also a raft of crap... I've been doing it for years with hundreds of clients. Yes, a number of my clients are using MSoffice and use .doc files, but how dumb are you to not figure out that openoffice.org can also use the .doc and a multitude of other formats. ALL of my clients are making the switch to OO.o v2 because it just makes sense. Everyone knows how to use an office suite, what support do you think it is we're looking for that we can't already find through Google? What rock is this guy hiding under cus he doesn't know squat about today's market? Sorry buddy, guys coding in their basement are going to be the reasons why morons like you don't have a job in ten years.
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|He's talking about the mass market, not the little niche that consists of us who know what we're doing. Ever turn on the TV and spot an ad for Video Professor? Ever laugh at it? Well don't, because it's there for one reason -- it sells. Why does it sell? Because 90% of the "market" doesn't know what the heck they're doing. They don't know how to make tables, they don't know how to create macros, they might not even know which button correctly closes their document instead of the entire program. The only thing moronic here is "us," the more literate computer users, the ones who know how to find things on Google if we need to because we simply think that everyone is as clever as us. That's not to say that I consider myself the grand supreme being of this earth who thinks he's better than everyone else -- no, but I realize that what I lack in the field of business managment for example I may make up for in my computer knowledge. So then the reverse might be true for someone who doesn't know squat about computers.
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