Alan Ashton peered over the bow of the Lord Hornblower as the yacht pulled up to Pier 33.
Ashton watched as the crew tied the big ship securely to the dock.He'd spent the past two hours engaged in similar work, only the vessel was WordPerfect.
Ashton and other company executives tethered the software firm securely to a new strategy during a cruise around San Francisco Bay Wednesday. WordPerfect cast off its old philosophy of isolation, acknowledging that in the computer industry of the '90s, "no company is an island."
Openness. Cooperation. Compatibility. Those are the company's new watchwords for whatever it takes to make WordPerfect the universal choice for communicating information.
"Where it makes sense for us to acquire technology, to license technology, to have support alliances, joint training and strategic alliances with other companies, we will do that in order to help our customers process, share and present information better," said Ashton, president and co-founder of WordPerfect.
Ashton founded WordPerfect with Bruce W. Bastian, company chairman, in 1979. The software program they developed is the best-selling DOS word processor in the world.
In addition to Ashton and Bastian, other company executives who participated in Wednesday's press conference were R. Duff Thompson, vice president and general counsel; John C. Lewis, vice president for international development; Dan Lunt, vice president of marketing; and Dave Moon, vice president of development.
Key components in the strategy they laid out:
- The company will market its products more aggressively.
- It will be a more willing partner in the industry.
- It will involve customers more extensively in product development.
- It will be more vocal in communicating its plans to the public, the industry and the media.
Ashton told the Deseret News that WordPerfect's willingness to be a team player is inspired in part by the need to serve large corporations that use its product on a variety of hardware systems. WordPerfect also needs to be compatible with other software programs they use.
To do that, WordPerfect will engage its strategic relations where it benefits new users, Ashton said. Thus the acquisition of MagicSoft Inc., which will allow the company to provide a telecommuncations package.
WordPerfect also plans to work more closely with Novell, the leading network operating system software company. WordPerfect has joined Novell's Technical Support Alliance, an organization of leading hardware and software manufacturers dedicated to ensuring their products work together.
"We are cross-training each other so Novell people will know more about WordPerfect and WordPerfect support people will know more about NetWare, the network operating environment that Novell has so we can jointly better help our customers," Ashton said.
Novell President Ray Noorda has long sought a symbiotic relationship with WordPerfect, Ashton said.
"He has approached us in the past, wanting to work with us, and we have had reluctance, I think probably unwisely so."
WordPerfect also is engaged in open discussions with IBM, Lotus, Borland, Apple and other leading computer companies, Ashton said. The company is also now licensed to distribute Adobe Type Manager with its software.
WordPerfect used the news conference to also tell people what it is not doing.
Ashton emphatically said the company has no immediate plans to go public, although such a move may be inevitable.
"We'll go public when it makes sense, if it makes sense," Ashton said.
However, it will begin operating like a public company in order to get its message out to the public.
"Many times we pick up an article in a magazine and WordPerfect's not even mentioned when they start talking about sales figures and so on," he said.
The media, and thus the public, will have more access to the company's financial and legal information, Bastian said.
WordPerfect is clearly buoyed by a PC Week survey that shows it surpassing Microsoft in the Windows market in 1992. Microsoft currently has 55 percent of the graphics-based software market. By the end of 1992, PC Week projects WordPerfect will have 51 percent of that market, which is the fastest-growing sector of word processing.
"The marketplace is moving forward and we find ourselves at a very central point," Ashton said.
The company is also experiencing rapid growth in international markets; those sales account for 40 percent of WordPerfect's business.
On all fronts it's full steam ahead for WordPerfect.
"We have a very strong feeling for where we need to go," Ashton said. "We are up to the competitive challenges ahead."