corporation corel headquarters in ottawa type private industry software programming founded 1985 ; 31 years ago 1985 founder michael cowpland headquarters ottawa on key people james baillie chairman 1 patrick nichols ceo 2 chris debiase cfo grace pura clo products wordperfect coreldraw winzip paintshop pro aftershot pro windvd painter revenue 268.2 million usd 2008 3 number of employees 500 2015 website corel.com corel corporation from the abbreviation cowpland research laboratory is a canadian software company headquartered in ottawa ontario specializing in graphics processing . it is known for producing software titles such as coreldraw and for acquiring paintshop pro video studio and wordperfect . contents 1 history 2 products 3 acquired products 4 corel world design contest 5 see also 6 references 7 external links history edit corel was founded by michael cowpland in 1985 as a research laboratory . the company had great success early in the high tech boom of the 1990s with the product coreldraw and became for a time the biggest software company in canada . in 1996 it acquired novell wordperfect and started competing with the thought of being pepsi to microsoft s coke 4 as microsoft word was the top used word processing software at the time . corel was in a difficult position as microsoft pushed pre loaded copies of its software onto new computers . this mainly consisted of microsoft works office applications but a variant called works suite also bundled the microsoft word software . the company held the naming rights to the home arena for the nhl s ottawa senators from february 1996 until january 2006 as the corel centre a venue currently known as the canadian tire centre . in 1997 corel sold its corel chemlab studio and its cd home collection consisting of over 60 multimedia titles as well as the corel chemlab studio to hoffmann associates a toronto based company . as part of the deal corel acquired a minority interest in hoffmann associates and received royalties . 5 in august 2000 cowpland was accused of insider trading and left . a new board of directors was then appointed and derek burney jr. announced that the product line would be split into several brands deepwhite procreate and corel . however these plans would be scrapped and only the corel brand would remain . corel acquired the graphics software company micrografx in late 2001 . in august 2003 corel was bought out by the private equity firm vector capital for 1.05 a share slightly more than the cash in the company . the company was voluntarily delisted from the nasdaq and toronto stock exchanges . some u.s. shareholders alleged the management benefited from the buyout personally while the buyout price was too low . a lawsuit was filed in the u.s. to stop the buyout and was unsuccessful . in march 2005 corel announced that the united states justice department purchased 50 000 licenses of wordperfect adding to the worldwide user base of 20 million and that wordperfect was adding 4 million new users per year thanks to bundling deals with dell . corel contended that wordperfect was the only viable alternative to microsoft office with sales 70 times more than lotus smartsuite . on april 26 2006 corel completed its return to the public market with an initial public offering on nasdaq 6 the same day finalizing the acquisition of winzip a well known archiving software title . on december 12 2006 corel completed its acquisitions of intervideo and ulead . the intervideo acquisition was valued at around 196 million . 7 in may 2008 ceo david dobson announced that he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at pitney bowes . 8 dobson was replaced on may 8 by former symantec executive kris hagerman . 9 in november 2009 it was announced that vector capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in corel corporation . 10 upon completion this made corel once again privately owned . 11 on january 29 2010 the shareholders of corel approved its previously announced stock consolidation completing the transfer to corel holdings l.p. a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of vector capital . 12 in january 2012 corel acquired roxio from rovi corporation for an undisclosed amount . 13 subsequently on july 2 2012 corel announced its acquisition of pinnacle systems a developer of consumer oriented video editing products such as the pinnacle studio series owned by avid . 14 having suffered layoffs in 2003 and 2008 15 corel began a near yearly culture of restructuring beginning in 2010 when in the latter part of that year the company s finance department was restructured and moved to their taipei office resulting in significant layoffs at its ottawa hq . restructuring in 2012 16 resulted in more layoffs . in december 2013 the company s restructuring resulted in the layoffs of the taipei locations engineering and quality assurance team . corel s taipei office was the core development centre of paintshop pro and videostudio one of the company s most well known photo and video editing bundles . the 2013 restructuring led to a complete handover of the product development to outsourced companies resulting in the inadequate support for pre and post purchase customers . the company continued with layoffs in 2014 and once again at the beginning of 2015 with the change of the company s ceo . products edit corel designer formerly micrografx designer professional technical illustration software . corel digital studio a set of four applications paintshop photo express a light version of paint shop pro videostudio express video editing software dvd factory dvd burning and converting software windvd dvd player software . coreldraw a vector graphics editor . corel graphics suite combination of coreldraw photopaint and capture . corel home office an office suite based on ability office 5 and also bundling corel s winzip software . 17 it is incompatible with corel s own wordperfect file formats . 18 corel knockout professional image masking plug in . corel paint it touch drawing and painting software created specifically for the windows 8 touchscreen pcs . corel painter a program that emulates natural media paint crayons brushes etc formerly fractal painter . corel photo album a sophisticated program for organizing digital photographs inherited from jasc software . corel photo paint a bitmap graphics program comparable to adobe photoshop bundled with the coreldraw graphics suite . corel snapfire a digital photo management suite positioned to compete with google s picasa offering . corel ventura desktop publishing software that had a large and loyal following for its dos version when corel acquired it in the early 1990s . it was briefly revived in 2002 . corel linux os discontinued one of the first gui based distributions of linux incorporating an automatic installation program in 1999 . corelcad 2d and 3d computer aided drafting software . 19 acquired products edit aftershot pro photo management software based on bibble after the acquisition of bibble labs in 2012 . avid studio a video and audio editor specializing in production technology . avid studio was renamed pinnacle studio in september 2012 . bryce software for creating 3d landscapes . sold in 2004 to daz productions . click and create a game development tool created by clickteam that was also sold as the games factory . click and create 2 was sold to imsi who released it as multimedia fusion . mindjet mindmanager in august 2016 corel purchased mindjet as per announcement . paint shop pro in october 2004 corel purchased jasc software developer of this budget priced bitmap graphics editing program . 20 paradox a relational database acquired from borland and bundled with wordperfect office professional edition . quattro pro a spreadsheet program acquired from borland and bundled with wordperfect office . videostudio a digital video editing program originally developed by ulead systems which remains a distribution of ulead systems . the software was rebranded corel videostudio since corel acquired ulead and it became a working division of corel . windvd a video and music player software acquired in 2006 from corel s purchase of intervideo . winzip a file archiver and compressor acquired in 2006 from corel s purchase of winzip computing . wordperfect a word processing program acquired from novell and originally produced by wordperfect corporation . xmetal an xml editor acquired in the takeover of softquad in 2001 and then sold to blast radius in 2004 . corel world design contest edit the annual corel world design contest first ran from 1990 through 1998 . the competition intended to recognize and encourage an international community of graphic artists from over 50 000 000 registered corel users . two finalists for each of the eight categories were awarded a trip to ottawa canada to participate in the corel world design contest gala and awards ceremony . the finalists from each of the eight categories received an issue of the corel crystal award . the collection of artworks were later released in a catalogue with bundled cd under the name of corel artshow . the contest was reinitiated in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of coredraw s launch and now runs every two years . the 2013 and 2015 contests each had a prize pool with a total value of usd100 000 . corel s historical logo logo for corel s short lived procreate brand corel s current logo the hot air balloon corel s second logo corel s third logo launched february 2001 see also edit bridgeman art library ltd. v. corel corporation references edit richardson tim 2003 06 19 . corel shareholders rebel . the register . retrieved 2015 09 05 . corel names patrick nichols as ceo pdf . retrieved 2015 08 15 . annual report pdf . corel corporation . retrieved 2016 07 18 . powers jeffrey . january 31 1996 corel acquired wordperfect . day in tech history . moby games summary of hoffmann associates inc . retrieved 19 december 2015 . kawamoto dawn 2006 04 26 . corel ipo stumbles out of the gate . cnet . retrieved 2015 09 05 . dobson david 2006 . corel s letter to customers on the intervideo ulead acquisition . corel . archived from the original on 2008 10 09 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . david dobson blurb . money 2020 . 2015 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . corel welcomes kris hagerman as permanent ceo . business wire . 2009 07 29 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . wauters robin 2009 11 26 . corel buys out corel . tech crunch . retrieved 2015 09 05 . corel holdings announces successful tender offer and commencement of subsequent offering period url accessed on 26 november 2009 shareholders approve consolidation of corel corporation shares . business wire . 2010 01 26 . archived from the original on 2011 06 05 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . muchmore michael 7 february 2012 . corel buys roxio from rovi releases first product . pcmag.com . retrieved 13 february 2012 . corel acquires pinnacle products from avid . corel press release . retrieved 7 september 2012 . wordperfect publisher to lay off 90 employees . silicon beat . 2008 09 10 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . symons courtney 2012 03 07 . corel confirms layoffs . ottawa business journal . retrieved 2015 09 05 . corel introduces new netbook ready office suite . pr web . 2009 06 17 . retrieved 2015 09 05 . dolcourt jessica 2009 06 16 . corel home office review . cnet . retrieved 2015 09 05 . cad software for mac and windows corelcad 2013 . corel.com . retrieved on 2013 07 17 . chastain sue . corel acquires jasc software . about.com . archived from the original on may 22 2007 . external links edit wikimedia commons has media related to corel corporation . corel website coreldraw website v t e corel products corel designer corel digital studio coreldraw