KKR Acquires Corel, Parallels Apple Mac Software Strategy?

Private equity firm KKR has acquired Corel and virtualization specialist Parallels for roughly$1 billion, according to TechCrunch. The KKR-Corel deal could foreshadow a more aggressive Corel push into Apple Mac-oriented productivity, collaboration, creative and IT management applications, ChannelE2E believes.KKR plans to invest heavily in Corels existing product lines (WordPerfect, Corel Draw, WinZip, PaintShop Pro) while also making acquisitions, according to a deal memo viewed by TechCrunch.Corel was founded in 1985 and initially gained prominence with Corel Draw, a graphics-related application and eventual suite. The company attempted to compete head-on against Microsoft Office starting in 1996. The strategy involved Corel acquiring WordPerfect and associated business productivity software from Novell. WordPerfect was once the leading word processing platform, but fell to niche status when Office for Windows 95 gained prominence.