By Simon Hodgson
Corel Corp, the Canadian graphics and office applications vendor has signed a licensing agreement with GraphOn Corp that will enable users to access Corel’s WordPerfect application across the internet. Corel will bundle Campbell, California-based GraphOn’s WinBridge technology into some of its applications which it will then market at application service providers.
Ultimately, the Canadian firm will integrate WinBridge fully with several of its own applications, but would not disclose either the time-scale of the integration or how many applications would offer the feature. Corel took a 20% stake in GraphOn earlier this year in return for selling WinBridge, then called jBridge, to GraphOn. This agreement is non-exclusive, which paves the way for other applications gaining the same facility.
Last week, GraphOn signed up Compuware Corp, the Farmington Hills, Michigan-based applications management and development tools company who will bundle WinBridge with its Uniface application development environment. GraphOn will release its OEM version of WinBridge, for enterprises, independent software vendors and ASPs, at Comdex in November, and a ‘general public’ edition at the end of the year, when it will say more.
GraphOn is repositioning itself to provide the link which enables users access applications over the web. The ‘Bridges’ series of products replaces GraphOn’s ‘Go’ series, with the individual products named for by operating system, rather than client system. WinBridge handling Windows applications is joined by LinuxBridge and UnixBridge.
