STAYING AHEAD Nero’s Man Shows His Cards - Page 1

Ahead has shown a rapid growth in the last 2 years with Nero Burning Rom having become a synonym for CD/DVD burning/authoring, and is successfully bundled with the majority of burner manufacturer’s retail packages. With key management decisions and strategic alliances, the company has adopted a formula for success based on satisfying market demands while maintaining technological prominence.

Mr Jim Corbett, Exeutive Director of Ahead Software AG, is the key figure behind all these successfully managed innovations from Ahead in the global software market. The following interview was kindly given to CDRInfo, just a few days before CeBIT 2004, Hanover, opens its gates.

CDRINFO: When Ahead's founders originally started the company, they had a vision in mind. What was that vision, what is it today and what is it for the future. We would like to know whether their vision has changed, and if so how and why.

J. Corbett: Well it might sound a bit of a cliché, but we genuinely had this vision of producing World class application software with instant brand name recognition. That vision still exists today, and probably more so as Ahead strives for mass market appeal in a converging IT and CE industry.

CDRINFO: What standards and criteria does Ahead enforce with regards to the level of their employees, especially in the fields of research and development, quality control and marketing.

J. Corbett: We’re very customer orientated, but also we’re a people company. We have some unbelievably creative employees at Ahead, and there is a lot of freedom. At the same time, we have a big responsibility to our users, so we’ve been very fortunate in getting a mix of talent that I think is quite unique in today’s software industry. Developers have a degree of freedom to expression that probably goes beyond that of our competitors, and importantly we have a management team that listens.

CDRINFO: What is the position of Ahead in the software market at this moment. How do you plan to maintain or even improve that position and what are your plans for future expansion?

J. Corbett: The past year has seen a huge change in Ahead Software. We’ve gone from being a one product company known primarily for CD Recording, to one that is marketing a complete suite of applications, targeting the DVD, Home and Mobile Entertainment, and Consumer Electronics Industries in general. We’ve expanded our engineering enormously over the past 2 years, and this is set to continue. Investing more in R & D, and naturally bringing more creative people on board, is paramount in our future planning.