Corel was founded by
Michael Cowpland in 1985 as a research laboratory. Michael Cowpland was CEO of
Mitel. Mitel needed writing and creative design programs to enhance the company product line. Corel products were born. Additional products were added. 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" 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 1996, Corel created a
full motion video game called
Mode. In 1997, Corel sold its Corel ChemLab studio and its "CD Home Collection" consisting of over 60 multimedia titles to Hoffmann + Associates, a Toronto-based company. As part of the deal, Corel acquired a minority interest in Hoffmann + Associates and received royalties. 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 were scrapped, and only the Corel brand remained. 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, the same day finalizing the acquisition of
WinZip, an archiving software title. On December 12, 2006, Corel completed its acquisitions of
InterVideo and
Ulead. The InterVideo acquisition was valued at around $196 million. In May 2008, CEO David Dobson announced that he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at
Pitney Bowes. Dobson was replaced on May 8 by former Symantec executive
Kris Hagerman. In November 2009, it was announced that Vector Capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in Corel Corporation. Upon completion, this made Corel once again privately owned. 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. In January 2012, Corel acquired
Roxio from
Rovi Corporation for an undisclosed amount. 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. Having suffered layoffs in 2003 and 2008, 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 its Taipei office, resulting in significant layoffs at its Ottawa HQ. Restructuring in 2012 resulted in more layoffs. In December 2013, the company's restructuring resulted in the layoffs of the Taipei location's 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 partial handover of product development to outsourced companies, resulting in more rapid, low-cost development across its product lines. The company continued with layoffs in 2014 and once again at the beginning of 2015 with the change of the company's CEO to Patrick Nichols, previously the head of Corel's WinZip business unit. In August 2016, Corel announced the acquisition of the
Mindjet MindManager business from Spigit. In June 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of Gravit GmbH. In December 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of
Parallels. On July 3, 2019, Corel was acquired by
KKR for a reported $1 billion. In September 2020, Christa Quarles was named the CEO of the company. In 2021, Prashant Ketkar was named the Chief Technology and Product Officer of the company. In September 2022, Corel was rebranded to Alludo (wordplay on the phrase "All You Do"). This prompted a
trademark infringement lawsuit by Alpenspruce Education Solutions Inc., which was settled in March 2025. == Products ==