COREL TO COME DOWN HARD ON MICROSOFT

The message from Corel now that it owns WordPerfect: Move over, Microsoft.

Corel CEO Michael Cowpland rallied his company's new troops in Orem Friday with plans to mount a direct assault on Microsoft's reign over the software market. Cowpland laid out Corel's strategy in a nearly two-hour meeting with employees at the Scera Theater in Orem.The goal is ambitious: to more than double its sales in 1996 to $550 million and to launch a "Pepsi-Coke" type of battle with Microsoft, Cowpland said.

"It is going to be a very exciting time regaining that market share back from Microsoft," Cowpland said.

He said booming interest in the Internet has opened a chink in Microsoft that Corel, which has a reputation for producing new, low-cost products quickly, will exploit.

"Microsoft is no longer controlling all the variables," he said.

A core of that strategy is a Corel WordPerfect suite that will include a slew of high-powered software programs, including Net-scape's Internet browser, with a street price of $100. No, that's not a typo - $100.

Cowpland said Corel will aim for WordPerfect product sales of $230 million in 1996; Novell sold $42 million worth of WordPerfect products in the first quarter of 1996.

Corel, based in Ottawa, Canada, announced in January it would buy Novell's business application division, which includes WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. Corel is best known for the graphics program CorelDRAW but has branched into multimedia consumer titles and Internet programs in the past year.

Cowpland's comments pleased Corel's new Utah employees, who interrupted his remarks frequently with whistles and applause.

"It all feels so comfortable. I enjoyed the WordPerfect environment, and I think we're returning to that here," said a programmer who declined to give his name. "This is the kind of directionthat we were looking for. Corel looks well-positioned to take us into the future."

About 600 employees - engineers and technical-support people who worked for Novell's business applications division - are joining Corel. Cowpland said no employees will be laid off, but Novell eliminated about 200 employees prior to Corel taking over the division.

The Utah employees will receive the same pay and benefits they had with Novell as well as stock options, Cowpland said.