Dec.
 2004

Editor’s note: Quark Inc. redefined desktop publishing when it first released QuarkXPress in 1987. Today, the software is used by thousands of layout artists and editors at newspapers worldwide to produce a wide variety of electronic and print documents. To find out what users can expect next from the Denver-based company, Newspapers & Technology Associate Editor Hays Goodman sat down with Quark President and Chief Executive Officer Kamar Aulakh at the GraphExpo conference in Chicago to discuss Quark’s plans for the future, and Aulakh’s vision for the evolution of QuarkXPress. 

with Kamar Aulakh President and Chief Executive Officer Quark Inc.

N&T: How has the advent of Internet journalism and media convergence challenged a company such as Quark, which is not very diversified?

Aulakh: When you talk about bloggers and things like that, it’s just not print anymore - it’s multimedia. Our product strategy is to continue to effectively support print publishing. We still have the largest number of our customers there. We’ve known that for a long time. It’s an area that we know well. But, also (we have) to transform into cross-platform deployment and cross-channel deployment.

The important thing is that our product suites support cross-channel publishing, so they support content re-use. You can re-use and re-author and deploy on multiple platforms. We’re doing this across our business units. 

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N&T: How is Quark organized?

Aulakh: We have four business units. Desktop is one of them, the second one is enterprise and workflow solutions, the third one is OEM and custom solutions, and the fourth one we just created, Quark Commerce.

Historically we’ve provided tools for our customers to create, manage and deploy content. (With Quark Commerce) we now provide the capability to add a business transaction to that content. 

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Kamar Aulakh

N&T: Where does OEM and custom solutions fit into the picture?

Aulakh: OEM and custom solutions is a totally new ballgame. We’ve evolved into this area because all the software we develop, we develop in components, which we glue together to build solutions. And a lot of our business associates are licensing those components to build their own solutions.

The other area is part of our strategy: Our customers are telling us that they’re having a difficult time going to [numerous] different vendors for parts of a solution. We are now developing end-to-end solutions for our traditional publishing market - newspapers, magazines, books and journals, catalogs, advertising - so a customer can come to one supplier: We can be a good business partner, looking at the big picture, resolving the issues across the board. You will see more of these solutions being shipped in each quarter.

N&T: What other applications does Quark need to develop in order to be able to provide the solutions customers need?

Aulakh: We have editorial solutions, digital content management solutions, and now we will add ad booking, issue and page planning, classified and display ad, production tracking, so you have the whole end-to-end solution.

N&T: When will these apps be released, particularly the classified ad creation products and the resource tracking software?

Aulakh: We will have three levels based on size (of the customer).

We will have a solution for the small (company) called QPS Studio. It’s shrink-wrapped and will probably be available first quarter of next year. It will be hardwired, easy to install and won’t require a system administrator to (oversee it).

For classic (customers), we will be building in ad management, available around the first quarter of next year.

For enterprise (customers), to address the ad-booking piece specifically (both Web and print classifieds), it will probably be available during the third quarter of next year.

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N&T: To this point, Quark has remained a privately held company. Have there been temptations to take the company public?

Aulakh: Yes, there have been temptations. I think this is a question that a group of shareholders thinks about every week, every month. What’s the market? How’s it doing? The Internet boom, let’s get on this bandwagon... so that’s a thought that’s processed very frequently, and my role, (is) to have the company ready and prepared for any eventuality. So far, the shareholders have decided to remain private and that’s the way we are. 

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N&T: With Quark QPS Classic and Enterprise, Quark has a DMS solution in the industry. Would it surprise you at all to see Adobe at some point come out with a digital asset management solution, seeing as how their other products cover a wide range in the production environment? Do you feel you could compete if they did?

Aulakh: There are two answers to your question. One, I would say yes, it wouldn’t surprise me, but the only reason I would say that is because they’ve always followed us. Look at their history: We announce something XML, and the very next quarter, they go announce something XML.

We have the DMS Server, they come out with an InDesign Server. But the probability is that it’s not going to happen anytime soon, because this is not something that happens overnight. For a desktop company that specializes in desktop products, to develop the engineering wherewithal, to develop enterprise products, (that) takes a few years. I’ve been through it. That’s why I know what’s involved.

What they (Adobe) have been trying to do is partner with others in that area and develop solutions through partnerships, but that’s not been working out too well for them.

If they’re going to go this route, sooner or later they’re going to have to engineer or re-engineer their teams to start thinking enterprise, building enterprise. 

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N&T: It’s been acknowledged by some in your company that the launch of QuarkXPress version 5.0 did not come off as smoothly as it could have. What steps did you take to ensure that the release of version 6.0 would go more smoothly?

Aulakh: During 5.0, to be honest with you, (Quark transformed) from an engineering and manufacturing perspective. If you remember those days, the Internet boom, it was so difficult to get engineering resources in the U.S., we had to go outside and set up development centers in five countries.

That whole upheaval, and at the same time trying to ship a product, was difficult. But we went through it. And now we are over it.

Now we have 1,600 engineers and growing. We have the wherewithal and we have the process in place. So to me, manufacturing is now predictable. Manufacturing to us is engineering - software engineering. When you ask questions like “When is QuarkXPress 7.0 shipping?” I can tell you that, because reliability and predictability in time-to-market is here.

The part that we’re really focusing on is our external interface with the customers. Historically, we’ve been a company that’s had an internal focus. We’re trying to change that to be a more external-focused company, focusing on our customers, working with them to solve their issues, their problems (and) partnering with them to build the best solution. This partnership doesn’t start after you ship the product, it starts before you ever write a first line of code.

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N&T: Are you pleased with the adoption rates you’re seeing for Quark 6.0?

Aulakh: Yes. It’s not just Quark 6.0. There’s another angle in this, and that’s OS X. People have to upgrade their hardware as well. So it’s a bigger issue, a larger investment than just buying 6.0. We are helping our customers to transition so that in their environments we will support OS 9 and OS X with our applications. We’re doing it with QPS, we’re doing it with XPress, and so on and so forth. But overall, the results have been very good. We’re quite pleased.

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N&T: Can you please explain the support situation for Quark 6? There seems to be some confusion among users about how much customer support is being done domestically versus overseas and the reasons for that?

Aulakh: We are a global company. Our software is in 27 languages that we support. We have 3 million customers around the world. It is our philosophy that for us to provide the best technical support, the tech support people must reside next to the Quark engineering people and the R&D developers, so they can provide efficient communication... so, as a result, a lot of our support does come out of India, but it’s for that purpose.

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N&T: InDesign was launched by Adobe to specifically target users of QuarkXPress. What are your company’s strengths versus Adobe’s and how do you feel the latest version of QuarkXPress competes with InDesign?

Aulakh: We just shipped 6.5 (on Oct. 12). There’s an impressive feature list, including things like QuarkVista, which allows image manipulation in XPress. This will reduce the total cost of ownership for our customers, giving them more for what they invest. We’ve got Photoshop file import features, we’ve got Quark Exclusive for variable data printing, we’ve got Citrix support, we’ve got Excel bi-directional support, enhanced tables... all this in 6.5. And 6.5 is a no-cost upgrade for anyone who is on 6.0. So in terms of feature set, we are ahead of the game. What I can sit and say is this: I have that much confidence in our manufacturing capability that we will always be ahead of the game.

But, what I do want to mention is that yes, there is competition. Perhaps we had grown a little lethargic when there was not competition, and that competition has certainly woken us up. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb making these statements. Competition is good - it breeds innovation and keeps us on our toes. 

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N&T: Do you plan on continuing to use XML more heavily in future products? Will QuarkXPress ever be completely re-architected, or do you feel very confident in the “base code” and that refinements will take you through a number of revisions to come?

Aulakh: We have accepted XML as “the” standard for data transformation, and every product - XPress, Quark Content Manager, QPS - it doesn’t matter, all products support XML to the fullest.

The second part you mentioned was the architecture of XPress. We’ve already revamped it. You won’t see it until 7.0. 7.0 is totally Unicode compliant. It supports all OpenType fonts, multiple languages, it’s easier for us to do all these things when you’re Unicode compliant. These are things that our customer doesn’t see ... but underneath, we’ve done all this work.

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N&T: Will the user interface have major changes and do you think your users will be comfortable with that?

Aulakh: That’s an interesting question. We have a UI group that, (has to) certify and bless all our UI on all our products - has to have the “Quark look and feel.” Yes, we want to make improvements. They would like to make improvements. It becomes a balancing act. Then you’ve got 3 million customers saying “What the heck are you trying to do this for, you always did it like that!” It’s a balancing act. We will make changes, we will make improvements, but not at the cost to the customer.

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