DOJ renews WordPerfect deal

IDG News Service - The U.S. Department of Justice has inked another deal with Microsoft Corp. competitor Corel Corp. for more than 50,000 licenses of Corel's WordPerfect office suite, Corel announced yesterday. The five-year agreement is worth up to $13.2 million.
The DOJ, which sued Microsoft in a monopoly-busting case that started in the mid-1990s, was already using WordPerfect before yesterday's announcement. But Corel trumpeted the new deployment of WordPerfect Office 12 as reaffirming the software suite's No. 2 position in the market, "despite hype around open-source solutions," which includes OpenOffice.org.
The DOJ had previously signed a deal for 35,000 copies of WordPerfect in 1999, according to Corel spokesman Mike Kaplan.
In a statement, the company said WordPerfect Office 12's installed base is growing by about 1 million users per quarter because of the flexible licensing agreements Corel offers. Each license provides a user with home and laptop privileges, giving employees licensed to use WordPerfect Office 12 at work the ability to use the same copy nonconcurrently at home or on their laptops.
The DOJ decided to buy WordPerfect again largely because it remains the "tool of choice for the legal arena," said Mary Aileen O'Donovan, program manager for the DOJ's Justice Management division. "We do what our customers require."
The department also uses Microsoft Office software for external communications with people outside the legal profession, she said. O'Donovan praised Corel for understanding the DOJ's enterprise needs and for its licensing flexibility.
Corel, based in Ottawa, is a private company and doesn't disclose sales figures. The company reports that WordPerfect Office 12 has more than 20 million customers worldwide. In the first quarter of its 2005 fiscal year, Microsoft reported revenue of $2.56 billion in its Information Worker group, which includes its Office products.
WordPerfect Office 12 is compatible with popular file formats, including Microsoft Office, PDF, HTML and XML, and allows customers to share files created in WordPerfect Office with users of other office productivity tools.