Corel Upgrades Flagship Wares

Corel, the Canadian software veteran, seems to embrace its underdog status, fancying itself a technology respite for smaller firms that balk at paying the big guys' licensing fees.

"We believe we are positioned as the leading alternative to Microsoft Office," says Jason Larock, product director for Corel's WordPerfect product line. "They own 90 percent of the market. But inside the other 10 percent, we own 96 percent of that space."

Such sentiment certainly doesn't show a lack of confidence. Just last month, Corel rolled out major upgrades to its flagship products, WordPerfect Office X3 and CorelDraw Graphics Suite X3. CorelDraw sports overhauled PowerTrace and PhotoPaint functionality, while WordPerfect has a redesigned user interface that looks more like Windows XP. WordPerfect will also now be able to publish PDF-format files from the entire suite, a feature that Microsoft Office will not be capable of until Office 12 is released later this year.

Corel is also upping its commitment to partners by introducing a deal-registration program, increasing its product-marketing assistance and rolling out a lead-licensing system, under which Corel will hand off a near-complete customer sale to a partner to close, according to Fiaaz Walji, director of channel sales.