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Joyent and Corel Announce Partnership to Deliver Joyent Connector to users of Corel WordPerfect Lightning
Today we’re pleased to announce that Joyent Connector is the online collaboration and backup component for a new partnership between desktop and Web software now available to users of Corel WordPerfect Lightning.
Corel Lightning is available for free to Windows clients, and users can sign up for a complimentary Joyent Connector account (two users) in addition to 200MB of storage. If Corel Lightning customers need more storage or accounts, they can choose to upgrade to Joyent’s paid tiers of service.
Hybrid, yes. Either/or, no.
There is general excitement about the many replications of Microsoft Office that have begun to appear on the Web. How much of this is anti-Microsoft sentiment, and how much utopian fervor, I don’t know. I have been very impressed with many of these products. Honestly, there is any number of word processors, text editors, spreadsheets, email clients, calendars, and file repositories available today. As long as one has an internet connection, and there is not latency, most of the time the software is pretty damn good, the Joyent applications among them.
The problem of connectivity continues to hamper mass adoption of entirely Web-based productivity applications. I wrote this post cruising at 31,000 feet in an airplane. I didn’t have network connectivity, so I couldn’t access my Web-based documents. I understand that is coming. Or is it? I guess I will be ready to firmly jump into the Web applications, alone, camp when I can drive from my home in Marin county, California to San Francisco without my cell phone (I use two different networks) dropping three times. Oops, just lost the sales forecast. Besides, I like to take my laptop and go off to a small park somewhere out in the sticks and just think and write. Maybe it’s the inner monastic in me, I like the solitude. There’s no cell signal there, let alone wifi. And there likely won’t be anytime soon, since most of the population of far western Marin is comprised of cows and goats.
The answer is to offer customers a hybrid approach. Let them use the tools they want, but plug them into collaboration networks. So we are Webifying them. That is, in fact, the workstyle of most people. Use a word processor AND email. Spreadsheet on the desktop AND instant messaging. Presentation software AND group collaboration software on the Web to schedule the presentation. Developers themselves do just this when they use tools like Subversion to do local development. One can think of the Joyent/Corel partnership as providing this sort of developer facility to everyman.
Let’s be practical.
Joyent’s approach is also practical from a business standpoint. There are two, for me, funny anecdotes that illustrate this. First, Joyent was developing a spreadsheet which we called “Numbers”. Late last spring I heard a fruity computer company was developing a spreadsheet to be called “Numbers”. Whether true or not is not the point. We continued. Then Google spreadsheets came out. We quickly dropped the spreadsheet. There’s just no point, my fellow entrepreneurs, in charging up a hill already occupied by Leviathan.
Second, I remember patting myself on the back at the Office 2.0 conference after seeing a number of my startup colleagues demonstrate very, very nice spreadsheet products – only to be upstaged by Google’s announcement and demonstration of multi-user spreadsheets. It was like a piano recital for talented students before Van Cliburn walks on stage. Let me repeat: there is no use charging up the hill already occupied by Leviathan. Joyent saw the same future for on-line word processors, presentation tools, etc. But Leviathan may have a chink in his armor. Join me on #hobbit and I’ll share. I’m serious.
What this means for Joyent
Well, this is the first time we are offering access to Joyent software for free. To date, Joyent has always charged for our software and services, and we are big believers in validating (or not) the value we provide to our customers through their willingness (or not) to pay. The belief remains. And Corel is the validation.
Second, the partnership with Corel means Joyent Connector will soon be used by millions of people worldwide. We are certainly excited about this prospect. Corel has been very successful finding the right channel partners to ensure a wide use of Lightning and Connector. We look forward to people using Connector around the world as the gold-
standard for nicely designed, well integrated, Web collaboration.
Third, all the infrastructure for the partnership is being provided on top of Joyent Accelerators. When the partnership reaches full scope, this will mean infrastructure spanning multiple datacenters, thousands of machines, and boatloads of bandwidth. I believe this is a validation of the direction Joyent has taken with Solaris, Sun, and our internal systems management infrastructure.
Fourth, this partnership represents major investments by Joyent in new functionality and infrastructure that will improve the experience of our existing customers.
Corel? What? Who?
I’m sure many of you are hearing the name Corel and are wondering, as I did when I saw Mickey Rooney on Oscar’s red carpet last Sunday, “are they still around?” Yep. Corel is around and stronger than ever. Corel is a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software with more than 40 million users worldwide. The Company’s product portfolio includes some of the world’s most popular and widely recognized software brands including CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®., Corel® Painter™, Corel DESIGNER, Corel® WordPerfect® Office, WinZip® and iGrafx®. In 2006, Corel acquired InterVideo, makers of WinDVD®, and Ulead, a leading developer of video, imaging and DVD authoring software. They have been successful in the recent past taking market share away from Microsoft Office. We at Joyent have been very impressed with the marketing and technical acumen of the team at Corel as we worked together to make today’s announcement a reality.
Postscript
I want to publicly thank the team at Joyent for the many sacrifices they have made to make the Corel partnership a reality. A word of thanks is also in order to Joyent family members. Thanks for letting us spend the late nights into early mornings to get this done. I also want to thank Joyent’s customers! Without your feedback, ever gentle, and support, we would not be were we are today.
Commenting is closed for this article.
I take it the #hobbit you mention is on irc.freenode? I cannot find it on there…..Confused….Help!
— Rob Elkin 858 days ago #I, too, stopped by freenode earlier…
Congrats on the announcement, sounds like things are mighty exciting for Joyent these days!
— Raymond Brigleb 858 days ago #This is a great idea for those of us who’ve been hanging out in the margins waiting for a chance to try out Joyent’s products. But how do I get the Joyent account associated with the WP offer? I’ve signed up for a Corel account, but there’s no obvious way from that to Joyent. Is it within the WP app itself that I get the Joylogin?
— Roger 858 days ago #Will there be a mac version of this?
— Gustavo Beathyate 858 days ago #Good to see a move like this.
However, I’m skeptical of Joyent’s choice of partner. I hope that they’ve left themselves the option to partner up with other software vendors to reach a wider platform audience in the future (ie: Linux, BSD, OS X, etc).
— Agent Ultra 858 days ago #@ Agent Ultra, these aren’t trivial things to arrange, and it’s not always up to us (that’s one), and the other is that we already have a massive bias towards people using OS X, Linux and BSD (they’re like 85% of our browser stats).
— Jason Hoffman 857 days ago #Still confused about how to sign up. I’m willing to install the WP software, but am not at a Windows machine right now. Can you clarify if the sign-up has to happen after or within the WP Lightning install, or if it can happen outside that?
— Roger 857 days ago #@Roger: the sign-up happens within Lightning.
— David Young 857 days ago #@Jason, I understand that there are reasons and motivations for choosing Corel that I’m not aware of which are likely perfectly valid and well thought-out.
I have much different biases (for better or worse). If it were me, I’d avoid proprietary closed-source platforms at all cost. It would be much cooler to see something like this integrated into an open-source offering like Open Office, IMO.
Either way, I think it’s a really great idea and look forward to seeing more of this web/desktop collaboration happening. Lot of potential there.
— Agent Ultra 857 days ago #Does anyone else find it strange that the partnership with Corel is for Windows only, and Joyent just yesterday announced they do not support IE 6.
http://joyeur.com/2007/02/24/joyentcom-now-with-more-jill#c002131
Also, I’m confused. When going to the Corel WordPerfect Lightning web page (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1171405162003#) and watching the “Video tour of WordPerfect Lightning” – I was expecting to see screenshots of Connector but did not. Corel shows video of an application that looks very old (late 1990s).
— Blake 857 days ago #Is anyone else having a difficult time finding how to sign-up for this service to get a Connector account?
— Tim 857 days ago #Is the link below suppose to represent Connector?
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1171919678599
— Tim 857 days ago #Guys, try http://tinyurl.com/yvxf2n. It is the actual signup page for the WP Lightning product. The link most of you have referenced takes you to the main product page for Corel. You will want to click that big red box on the right that says ‘FREE DOWNLOAD’. You can then sign up for a beta account and play to your little hearts content.
— Kristie Wells 857 days ago #Excellent news. Can you shed some light on another partnership you previously announced – with Linksys to unify/integrate the Connector application suite with their VoIP offerings? I know it’s a little off topic…
— Steve Hubbard 857 days ago #The Corel registeration process is HORRIBLE.
They do not clearly explain what the product is, and how to even sign-up for it (if you even wanted too since it’s a complete mystery what you are registering for).
I don’t want to sound too much like a critic, but no wonder why Corel is doing so bad lately.
— Jacob 857 days ago #Sorry for the double post, I meant to write this above.
If anyone is able to sign-up and get their Connector account, please post the instructions of what you had to do in order to get access.
This is what I did, which results in a dead end:
1. I want to the Corel Lightning web page (link in post).
2. I click the link for “FREE DOWNLOAD”.
3. Clicked register as a new user.
4. Filled out the crazy long registeration form.
5. That then put me to a page informing me that I can download the software.
6. I click download, it then asks me to register as a new user all over again!
I check my e-mail. Corel e-mail me informing that I have registered (no sh*t). Yet they don’t tell me what to do. No Connector account. They don’t even explain what I use this registered account for, expect to say that I need it for “corel.com”.
I’m sooooooooooooo confused.
The crazy thing about all of this is that Corel just describes this product as a collaboration word precessor. Their web site copy sounds like it was written by some consulting company that went crazy on the buzz words.
What ashame. Hopefully they fix this, or someone smarter than me posts how to get the Connector account.
Jacob
— Jacob 857 days ago #Note: I was never able to download the software because after I would register, when the software download link was presented – when clicked, it would take me to the new user registeration page all over again.
I already had a Corel account, so this is what I did.
1. Went to the Lightning page.
2. Clicked Try
3. Logged in
4. Downloaded and installed Lightning
5. Clicked Settings
6. Clicked Online Services
7. Clicked Create an Account…
It all worked flawlessly for me.
— Matthew Fitzsimmons 857 days ago #I must say, this is a very cool service. I’ve only played with it briefly, but I’m impressed.
Now if they only had a Mac version…
Jacob, you have to download the software in order to set up the Connector account (it’s done from within the software. I’m using IE7 in XP and it worked fine. It did give me the bar across the top asking if I wanted to really download a file first, but that’s it. Are you using IE7?
— Matthew Fitzsimmons 857 days ago #Sun adopts GPL 3 for OpenSolaris. How will this affect Joyent? Maybe this can be discuss in the next ps grep, along with the partnership with Corel.
— Henry 856 days ago #This would be a good week to have a ps grep podcast, no?
— Gregory 855 days ago #@Gregory: we’re doing the next show next week. Tape on Tuesday, release on Wednesday.
— David Young 855 days ago #Who do we have to talk to here to get the quota bumped to 2GB? ...or 4GB since it is a two user account after all. Corel? The offering should at least keep pace with G^^@!L. It’s an interesting offer none the less.
— jonto 854 days ago #It’s clearly David and Jason in the masthead graphic, though who’s the woman?
— Hank 852 days ago #It’s Jill.
— Jason Hoffman 852 days ago #And where is Terence?
— Velimir Ljubic 852 days ago #Design gotcha:
I first want to say that I like the new integrated design.
Though, does anyone else find it strange that the Joyent graphic on the top left links to joyeur and not Joyent.
— Hank 852 days ago #Another design note:
The new blog headines are colliding. Increasing the line-height should help.
— Hank 851 days ago #The work in process throughout the day has been fun to watch as the design of this blog processes :)
— Hank 851 days ago #