Corel Cuts 220 Jobs to Save $12M

Cecil writes "Just saw this story on the City of Ottawa's website: 'The Software maker Corel Corp. is cutting 220 jobs - more than a fifth of its workforce - in a bid to reduce costs and return to profitability amid weak technology spending.'" Of course, this stinks for those who are laid off, but hopefully Corel can turn things around.

Comments

Not The City Of Ottawa Web Site

[petele]

That isn't the city of Ottawa web site, thats a local news web site. If you want the City Of Ottawa's web site, check out http://www.city.ottawa.on.ca/

Good bye great Office Suite

[pardasaniman]

I think that Corel's failure was the fact that people pirate MS Office, and don't care to try out less expensive office suites.

In my opinion Corel Office was much more intuitive, yet, in my school, there is not one person excluding myself who doesn't pirate software. In fact teachers indirectly encourage students to get MS Office off Kazaa or "to borrow it from a friend"

It is really really sick.

We must stop piracy in the education system, it'll save good companies like Corel.

Re:Good bye great Office Suite

[BluedemonX]

There was that big hullaballoo over the government going for Office rather than Corel's offering. They yanked the civil servant responsible for the decision off his fishing holiday to explain why he wasn't buying Canadian.

To which the servant coldly replied that their demo crashed multiple times and their products simply didn't do what the contract required. Whereas Microsoft showed up to their demo on time, prepared, with working products that met the requirements. Any questions? Have a good day.

Dude, Corel tried to GIVE away Corel Office to every city government in the Ottawa area. ALL of them turned it down in favor of BUYING office. Waving the flag doesn't sell a crap product.

Now would be the time for Apple to step in...

[2nd Post!]

Infuse, say, $20M into the company with a promise for Corel WordPerfect for OS X, and maybe stronger ties between Corel's graphic products and OS X...

Keeping in touch

[MagPulse]

As I hear about these continual massive layoffs, I wonder if the ex-employees are keeping in touch. Most of them probably haven't looked for a job lately, so it will take them a little time to get back in to it. Also it's important for them not to feel bad about it. They will go through a life-changing event, and there will be hundreds or thousands of people going through the same thing in a conveniently small geographical area, so it would be great for them to help each other and at least use each other for networking.

I guess I'm just proposing something like www.exemployees-forum.com.

Corel's problems...

[markv242]

IMHO, Corel has gotten itself into this rut because it has tried to create too much with too little.

Draw, Wordperfect, Office, etc etc. All the while they're creating ports of .Net to FreeBSD (that won't generate any revenue) and other various frivolous projects. This is a little bit like the plight of Sonic Foundry; getting into video and creating five different audio suites really dilutes the manpower to create great applications.

What Corel needs to do is concentrate on one product and make sure it's the best in the business. Go after Photoshop. Go after Office (well, on second thought, don't). But don't go after both at the same time.

Re:Why the buyin?

[aussersterne]

Part of the problem is that all of the young hotshot twenty-somethings don't yet realize that they're on the block next.

These kids went to school, got headhunted, got a $40k salary and got stock options just like that without ever really having to think about anything. Sure, they think they're working hard, but there's just no comparison, for example, to the much more grim and realistic world experienced by kids graduating from college during the Carter years (to chose an epoch at random). The economic slide hasn't hit the current group of young adults hard enough yet; they still believe it's the nature of existence to have cash in hand and food on table and they basically consider anyone who doesn't to be a lazy bum or an idiot. They have no connection whatsoever to the concept that one can be qualified, willing, and actively searching for work and yet still end up starving.

Give it a few years. If this economic downturn starts to hit enough dotcom kids, you'll begin to hear Athese same anti-union love-Bush American kids begin to cry like babies and maybe even have some sympathy not only for laid off Americans but also for other peoples around the world, who even today in the first world are struggling much harder in many places.

Corel Products Rank Among the Best

[FFFish]

Let's take an overview of what Corel sells:

- WordPerfect. Matches every feature of Word, and throws in a few more: Reveal Codes, and a SGML mode, plus frame placement that actually works.

- Paradox. An awesome database engine. Far better than Access, last I read from the pointy-heads that know this sort of thing.

- Quattro. At least up to Office 97, it matched Excel for features. I haven't the foggiest what either company has added (or even could add!) to the spreadsheets, so I don't know how they compare now.

- Ventura Publisher. Its only competition is FrameMaker. It has far better typographic controls and UI, plus it comes with a database publisher that simply rocks, and XML import that appears to be more powerful than FrameMaker's.

- Corel Draw. It is awesome. I think it can be argued that it's the best general-purpose vector illustration program out there.

- PhotoPaint. It's easily as good as Photoshop. It does have a rather different UI, but the power is there.

- XMetaL. From the recent SoftQuad purchase, it is one of the best XML creation/maintenance engines out there. Coupled with Ventura for publishing to print, and it's beyond compare.

- iGrafx. From another recent purchase, these are a set of Process/Workflow tools that are incredible.

- Painter. From its Metacreations purchase, Painter is an incredible "natural media" simulation. It's a world apart from Draw and Paint, and a helluva lot of fun.

I think that pretty much covers their major product list.

Each and every one of those products ranks in the top three for its category in terms of functionality.

Unfortunately, Corel has several things going against it:

- Major (and foolish) Mac bias in the graphics/publishing market.

- An incompetant marketing department.

- A history of buggy product releases (though the inevitable service packs always help a lot).

And, of course, there's always the harsh reality that the best products don't always come out on top... and we're all familiar with some really crappy products that are dominating the market.