Michael Cowpland (born April 23, 1943 in

Bexhill-on-Sea Bexhill-on-Sea (often shortened to Bexhill) is a seaside town and civil parish situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England. An ancient town and part of the local government district of Rother, Bexhill is home to a number of arc ...

) is a British-born entrepreneur, businessman, and the founder and one-time president, chairman and CEO of

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviation ...

, a Canadian software company.

Career

Mitel

Cowpland worked for Bell Northern Research (later part of

Nortel Networks Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec, ...

), then

MicroSystems International Microsystems International Limited (MIL) was a telecommunications microelectronics company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, founded in 1969. MIL was an early attempt to create a merchant semiconductor house by Nortel Networks (then Northern Elect ...

. In 1973, Cowpland and

Terry Matthews Sir Terence Hedley Matthews (born 6 June 1943) is a Welsh-Canadian business magnate, serial high-tech entrepreneur, and Wales' first billionaire. He was the richest man in Wales until 2012, when he was surpassed by Sir Michael Moritz. He h ...

founded Mitel Corporation, a company that developed and sold electronic PBX systems. Initial success made both founders millionaires. Sales peaked at $250 million, but over-expansion and development problems saw the company bought by

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

. Both Cowpland and Matthews left the company in 1984 amid disagreements with the owners.

Corel

Matthews went on to found

Newbridge Networks Newbridge Networks was an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada company founded by Welsh-Canadian entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews. It was founded in 1986 to create data and voice networking products after Matthews was forced out of his original company Mitel ...

, while Cowpland launched Cowpland Research Laboratory (soon

) in Ottawa in 1985. At first, the company sold DTP workstations, but success did not arrive until the launch of the graphics software

CorelDRAW CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below). T ...

in 1989. In 1996, he offered a challenge to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

with a move into

productivity software Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings, ...

, acquiring WordPerfect from

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

for $158 million. However this was unsuccessful as Microsoft managed to get many new computers loaded with

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

along with

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The company also made unsuccessful forays into

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and other developments. He was investigated by the

Ontario Securities Commission The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) is a regulatory agency which administers and enforces securities legislation in the Canadian province of Ontario. The OSC is an Ontario Crown agency which reports to the Ontario legislature through the Minis ...

(OSC) in 1999–2000 regarding allegations that he had used insider information to sell $20 million in Corel shares at $8/share shortly before the company posted disappointing results. The two sides settled the case in 2003, with Cowpland agreeing to pay $575,000. Subsequent to Cowpland's alleged insider sale at $8, Corel shares hit a peak of $60/share around November 1999, during the height of the Linux boom when Corel's Desktop Linux was seen to be a potential rival to Microsoft Windows. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment product ...

with a view to creating a critical mass for Linux, Cowpland left Corel in August 2000, and moved on to buy control of ZIM corporation, a database and mobile content company which is listed on the NASDAQ bulletin board (ZIMCF).

Personal life

He was married to his first wife Darlene until 1991 when they divorced. They have two daughters, Paula and Christine. In 1992, he married his second wife, Marlen Cowpland. The couple live in a $14-million 1,800-square-metre house in

Rockcliffe Park, Ontario Rockcliffe Park ( French: ''Parc Rockcliffe'') is a neighbourhood in Rideau-Rockcliffe Ward, close to the centre of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1864, organized as a Police village in 1908, and an independent village from 1926, and ul ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cowpland, Michael 1943 births Living people Businesspeople from Ottawa English businesspeople Carleton University alumni Alumni of Imperial College London People from Bexhill-on-Sea English emigrants to Canada Nortel employees Canadian technology company founders Corel Canadian technology chief executives Canadian chairpersons of corporations