The Justice Department licenses more than 50,000 seats of Corel's office suite.Corel Corp. announced a major customer win Monday in the form of a more than 50,000-seat license of its WordPerfect Office 12 office suite to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The company in the announcement release touted the win as a "key milestone" for WordPerfect Office and noted, "The DOJ adoption of WordPerfect Office 12 marks one of the world's largest deployments of an alternative office suite across a single organization."
Richard Carriere, general manager for office productivity at Ottawa-based Corel, spoke with Publish.com about the win and its long-term impact. "Looking at Microsoft [Corp.]'s growth in the government and legal sector and then having the DOJ choose us in 2005 proves there's a relevance for what the product does and its benefits to the client," Carriere said.
"Even with the suit against Microsoft mostly behind them, the DOJ is still choosing our solution as the right alternative because it presents substantial benefits to the user."
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As an example of benefits in the legal arena, Carriere cited advanced features in WordPerfect Office 12 as preferable over other competitors, including its ability to handle the complexity of government and legal documents and expediently connect them to other advanced legal-focused tools within the software.
Carriere also noted that with the release of WordPerfect Office 12 in April of last year, there were enhancements made specifically in the upgraded version to enable users in the government and legal arena to utilize the software to improve their process.
"From the previous version we improved the existing PDF engine, the ability to open and save to Microsoft file format, and we added and improved tools to specifically help address the learning curve for people coming from other applications into WordPerfect Office 12 usage. We wanted to minimize the cost of training and made the improvements around that as one of our focuses," said Carriere.
Another reason why the DOJ chose WordPerfect Office 12 had to do with licensing and cost, as revealed in the release statement by Mary Aileen O'Donovan, program manager for the Justice Management division at the DOJ: "Corel has consistently shown that they really understand how enterprise agreements should work—we pay once and then go forth in use."
Carriere said that economical licensing fees were a key differentiator in choosing what he terms the alternative to Microsoft. "We not only wanted to minimize the cost of training, but our goal is always to provide higher function features, compatibility and flexibility with economical licensing costs," he said. "We do not have required upgrades or a software assurance setup where someone has to pay to keep the products. We sell it and users can use it.
"We have some users within the government sector who were still working with versions 9 or 10 but are now upgrading to Version 12 because of its level of value to the work process they need to employ." Carriere said roughly one-third of Corel's licensees are from the legal and government sector.
Corel has long been in the shadow of first mover Microsoft in the office suite category, and analysts in the past have predicted Corel's demise in the sector. However, according to Joe Wilcox, senior analyst for Jupiter, the DOJ deal is a big win for Corel.
"The DOJ is definitely a showcase win for Corel," Wilcox said. "It really illustrates that WordPerfect Office is not just still around, but it's gaining as an attractive alternative to Microsoft. Our survey data based on usage of [WordPerfect] shows it in the No. 2 position in every market."
Carriere said the company has every intention of capturing more market share and continuing its push for relevancy as the economically driven alternative solution for home users, businesses and the government sector.
Pricing for the GSA license of WordPerfect Office 12 starts at $106, and users can download a free 30-day trial version of WordPerfect Office 12 at www.wordperfect.com.
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