Corel to offer WordPerfect Office suite via the Web
Corel Corp. and FutureLink Corp. on Monday announced a partnership to offer Corel's WordPerfect Office 2000 productivity suite on the Web.
In a two-month pilot program, FutureLink, an ASP (application service provider) based in Irvine, Calif., will remotely host the software and allow clients to purchase rental licenses for $9.99 per user per month.
FutureLink will host the core applications of WordPerfect Office 2000, comprising WordPerfect 9 for word processing, Quattro Pro 9 for spreadsheets, Corel Presentations 9 for slide shows, CorelCentral 9 for personal information management and Trellix 2.0 for Web publishing.
The pilot program will be "live" by the end of November, and a tiered pricing structure will be available for companies that make volume purchases, according to Sheldon Speers, business development manager for e-commerce at Corel.
"The whole outsourcing model lets our customers lower their costs because they can offload a lot of their third-party help-desk functionality to a third party like FutureLink," Speers said.
Corel and FutureLink conducted "high-level discussions" for the past 18 months, Speers said. He added that Corel intends to make WordPerfect Office 2000 and other applications available to any ASP, although no other agreements are now in place.
FutureLink allows companies to avoid hardware/software upgrade cycles by outsourcing their computing service and support, which allows them to control their total cost of technology ownership and focus on their core businesses.
FutureLink can be reached at www.futurelink.com. Corel, of Ottawa, Ontario, is at www.corel.com.