Business leaders around the nation were startled this week by the unexpected resignation of Alan Ashton as president and chief executive officer of WordPerfect, the phenomenal software company headquartered in Provo that has helped put Utah on the world computer map.
The privately held company has undergone a number of executive changes in the past couple of years as WordPerfect has struggled to regain its dominant market share in competition with Microsoft, the other software giant. But the departure of the 51-year-old Ashton was a major surprise.Ashton will join co-founder Bruce Bastion as co-chairmen of the company board of directors. The two men achieved a remarkable success, starting a company from scratch with a single idea and building it into a world-famous computer empire in less than 15 years.
Ashton, a graduate of the University of Utah, had an idea for a word-processing computer program while a graduate student at the U. Later, while a computer science professor at Brigham Young University, he teamed with Bastian in 1979 to write such a program for personal computers.
The two persevered during discouraging times, even when backers withdrew financial support - an investment decision the backers must have nightmares about since WordPerfect saw explosive growth in the mid-to-late 1980s, reaching annual sales of hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees.
It was the kind of story that is familiar to the world of computer software, where a good idea can open the door to instant success. But Ashton and Bastian carried their personal triumph far beyond the usual limits. It was like the old rags-to-riches stories of Horatio Alger - and then some.
Ashton's greatest satisfaction from his success as a computer entrepreneur is not the wealth that it produced but the jobs and pay it has provided to thousands of Utahns who are employed by or benefit from the company. That kind of philosophy does him credit.
Fortunately, Ashton - and Bastian - have not severed all ties with the company but will continue as long-range planners on the board of directors as WordPerfect faces the highly competitive future of computer software.