Updated: Kamar Aulakh is out as chief executive after 16 months; the company names vice president Linda Chase as his interim replacement.Quark Inc., the maker of Quark XPress page layout software, has parted ways with CEO Kamar Aulakh, the company announced Wednesday night.
Linda Chase, senior vice president of commerce product development, has been appointed by the Board of Directors as acting president of the company on an interim basis. The company said it will now seek a new CEO.
Quark's three-paragraph statement did not give a reason for the move.
Glen Turpin, director of communications, told Ziff Davis Internet News at the Quark Users Summit in Dever that the departure was a "personal matter between Kamar Aulakh and the company."
Aulakh became CEO in February 2004, replacing company founder Fred Ebrahimi. He had served previously as the company's president.
Click here to read Andreas Pfeiffer's recent column on Quark.
According to a professional publishing insider who declined attribution, the news of Aulakh's departure was "disappointing."
"Quark was making progress under his leadership," the source said, pointing to the company's increased efforts in the area of customer support, revamped sales and marketing organization, and a more frequent revision cycle for the client and server platforms. "Once again, the company is showing signs that the same old [management] shenanigans are happening again."
Aulakh was also credited with moving software development offshore.
Quark, which is based in Denver, has been in a dogfight for market share with Adobe Systems Inc. for years and has been losing market share since Adobe launched its InDesign page layout application.
Industry observers have said that Adobe's move to integrate InDesign in its Creative Suite, which also includes Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive and Acrobat, has proved advantageous in the desktop publishing war with Quark.
Quark has been dogged by image problems relating to customer service issues and a lengthy delay in porting Quark XPress to Apple Computer Inc.'s OS X operating system.
A Quark executive addressed the company's reputation in a recent interview with Publish.com. "Quark in the past has been entirely and completely focused on product development," said Susan Friedman, senior vice president of marketing at the company. "This came out of a legacy of development focus that came at the expense of focus in other areas—at expense of our customers.
"In the past, someone could have said we were arrogant, but we have made a lot of changes and demonstrated that we can change. Now we're getting closer to the company that we want to be. We need to keep demonstrating this."
Friedman said then that Aulakh had been leading a campaign to improve Quark's image and improve customer service. The company recently made several announcements about features in the upcoming Version 7 of Quark XPress but has not said when the update will be released.
Chase has worked for more than 20 years in the publishing industry and has been leading the QuarkCommerce business unit since 1998. She will continue in her current role while serving as acting president, according to the company.
Quark has retained executive search firm Christian & Timbers to lead the search for a new CEO.
Editor's Note: David Morgenstern and Sean Gallagher provided additional reporting for this story. This story was updated to include information and comments from the company and professional content industry sources.
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