Strategic Agreement with Corel

In a move reminiscent of previous investments in struggling competitors, Microsoft and Corel announced that in return for an investment by Microsoft of US$135 million, Corel would utilize and support technology from Microsoft. The quid pro quo calls for Corel to support the Microsoft .NET platform.

The agreement provides for support of key parts of that platform—the .NET framework and services—outside of Microsoft’s product line, and could lead to support for the .NET platform on the Linux operating system.

The agreement describes the “.NET Framework” as the Microsoft Common Language runtime (.NET runtime), which is a set of class libraries, and a substantially updated version of Active Server Pages (ASP+). The “.NET Services” described in the agreement are Web services that support both the XML format and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), the Microsoft business orchestration language (XLANG), the SOAP discovery standard (DISCO), and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI).