Corel Names New Sales Exec To Oversee Channel Operations

Software vendor Corel has named Kevin Thornton, previously a sales executive at Sage Software, as the company's senior vice president of sales and marketing, Americas. In the position Thornton will oversee Corel's channel sales operations, including those through resellers, OEMs, retailers and online marketers, as well as direct sales and customer support.

Thornton is taking over the post held by Patrick Morley who was promoted to chief operating officer earlier this year. Muffin Mott, vice president of channel sales, Americas, reports to Thornton.

Corel markets graphics and personal productivity applications, including its flagship CorelDraw and the venerable WordPerfect Office word processing software. Despite competition from the market-dominant Microsoft Word, WordPerfect remains popular in some markets such as government.

"WordPerfect is still big in legal," says Jay Tipton, president of Technology Specialists, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based reseller of Corel and Microsoft software in legal and health-care markets. Corel has been working with the VAR on a couple of deals involving WordPerfect and Draw, he says.

But an increasingly big chunk of Corel's revenue is generated by sales of the company's digital media software, including WinDVD, MovieFactory, VideoStudio and MediaOne.

"I think the greatest upside potential is in the digital media space. It's a very hot market right now," Thornton said in an interview. "And the channel is a big part of that." While Corel has some sizable OEM deals for its digital media products, one of Thornton's goals is to help channel partners build more complete solutions based on the vendor's products.

Before taking the Corel job Thornton worked at Sage Software for more than five years, most recently serving as senior vice president of sales in that company's small business division. Before that Thornton worked at Corel for about five years, last holding the post of vice president of sales, Americas.