# WordPerfect and Novell

**Type:** work
**Status:** Draft
**Confidence:** High
**Focus:** software, word processing, networking, personal computing, Utah Valley
**Era:** WordPerfect 1979-1996; Novell 1979/1983-2014; peak influence late 1980s to mid-1990s
**Location:** Orem and Provo, UT
**Updated:** 2026-06-19
**Pull:** *For about a decade, the world's most-used word processor and its most-used office network both shipped from Utah Valley.*

## Summary

For roughly a decade, two of the most widely used pieces of personal-computer software on earth were built within about ten miles of each other in Utah County. WordPerfect, the dominant DOS-era word processor, came out of Orem. Novell NetWare, the network operating system that connected most office PCs before the internet era, came out of Provo.

WordPerfect grew from a 1979 contract to write word-processing software for the city of Orem's Data General minicomputer. Brigham Young University computer-science professor Alan Ashton and graduate student Bruce Bastian kept the rights, formed Satellite Software International, and built it into WordPerfect Corporation (renamed 1986). Novell began in 1979 as a struggling hardware company, Novell Data Systems, and was reincorporated as Novell, Inc. in 1983 when Ray Noorda took over and refocused it on networking software. Its NetWare operating system, architected largely by a team of young BYU graduates led by Drew Major, became the standard way to link office computers.

Both companies lost their markets to Microsoft in the mid-1990s, but they had already proved that category-defining software could be built and sustained in Utah.

## Impact

WordPerfect and Novell are the two pillars of Utah's pre-"Silicon Slopes" software identity. Together they established that Utah Valley could ship globally dominant software, train thousands of engineers and operators, and generate the wealth and talent that seeded later companies.

WordPerfect became the best-selling word processor in the United States by the mid-1980s and reached as much as 60% of the worldwide word-processing market by the early 1990s, with especially deep adoption in law firms. Novell NetWare reached roughly a two-thirds share of the network-operating-system market at its early-1990s peak, with over half a million NetWare networks installed and tens of millions of users. For a stretch, Novell was the second-largest personal-computer software company in the world, behind only Microsoft.

## What Was Created

WordPerfect was a keyboard-driven, function-key-centered word processor known for a clean "sparse" screen and its distinctive "Reveal Codes" view, which let users see and edit the hidden formatting codes inside a document. It ran on a wide range of machines and operating systems, and the company became famous for free, extensive telephone support at a time when that was rare. WordPerfect 4.2 (1986) and especially 5.1 (1989) set the DOS standard.

NetWare solved a different problem: making isolated PCs cooperate. Its server software let many machines share files and printers and centralized administration over a local-area network. A key design decision, made by Major, Kyle Powell, and Dale Neibaur, was to abstract the server software away from proprietary hardware so it could run on the IBM PC platform rather than locking customers to a specific box. Novell also shipped Btrieve (an early multi-user LAN database) and, later, directory services (NDS) that prefigured modern enterprise identity systems.

## Why It Mattered

Before WordPerfect, word processing on PCs was crude. WordPerfect showed that serious professional software could be designed, sold, and supported from outside Silicon Valley, and it set the template for a Utah software company: low debt, lean spending, and obsessive customer support. Ashton and Bastian famously kept the company free of outside financing and debt until it was sold.

Before NetWare, PCs were mostly standalone. Novell made shared file servers, shared printers, and centralized IT administration ordinary, directly enabling the growth of office computing in the years before the public internet. NetWare's hardware-independent design helped break the era's pattern of proprietary networking boxes.

## Utah Context

These two companies are why Utah Valley became a technology center. Alongside the [University of Utah computer graphics program](utah-computer-graphics-program.md) and [Evans & Sutherland](evans-and-sutherland.md) to the north in Salt Lake City, WordPerfect and Novell anchored a parallel, business-software cluster in Provo and Orem rooted at BYU rather than the University of Utah.

The human and financial legacy is direct. When Novell bought WordPerfect in 1994, Ashton and Bastian each received roughly $700 million in Novell stock; Ashton later funded the Thanksgiving Point complex in Lehi. A generation of engineers, product managers, and executives who trained at the two companies went on to populate the later Utah startup ecosystem.

## People and Institutions

- **Alan Ashton** — WordPerfect co-founder; BYU computer-science professor (with a University of Utah degree and prior exposure to the Evans & Sutherland graphics world) who designed the original word processor.
- **Bruce Bastian** (1948-2024) — WordPerfect co-founder; BYU graduate student and marching-band director who built early versions; later a major Utah philanthropist.
- **Ray Noorda** (d. 2006) — became Novell CEO in 1983; turned a failing hardware maker into the networking-software leader; often called the "father of network computing."
- **Drew Major, Kyle Powell, Dale Neibaur** — BYU graduates who designed the core NetWare architecture; Major became "Mr. NetWare" as the company's chief scientist.
- **Institutions** — Brigham Young University; the Eyring Research Institute (where the Orem word-processing contract originated); the city of Orem.

## Lessons for Builders

- Category-defining software can come from a service contract. WordPerfect began as work-for-hire for a city government; keeping the IP rights changed everything.
- Distribution and support are product features. WordPerfect's free phone support and Novell's hardware-independent server were as decisive as raw code.
- Dominance is not permanent. Both companies owned their markets and still lost them in a few years when the platform shifted from DOS to Windows. Novell's 1993 acquisition of UNIX from AT&T is often cited as a costly distraction during exactly that transition.
- Talent and capital compound locally. The wealth and people produced here seeded later Utah companies more durably than the products themselves survived.

## Evidence

- [Wikipedia: WordPerfect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect) — origin, market-share figures, version history.
- [Deseret News (1989): WordPerfect — Orem company had humble beginnings](https://www.deseret.com/1989/10/29/18830214/wordperfect-orem-company-had-humble-beginnings-10-years-ago-but-now-manufactures-most-popular-word-p/) — contemporary local reporting on the Orem origin and scale.
- [FundingUniverse: History of WordPerfect Corporation](https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/wordperfect-corporation-history/) — company timeline and 1986 rename.
- [Wikipedia: Bruce Bastian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bastian) — biography and the ~$700M Novell-stock detail.
- [Wikipedia: Novell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell) — Provo HQ, ~63% NOS market share, scale figures.
- [Network World: Novell through the years](https://www.networkworld.com/article/716525/data-center-novell-through-the-years.html) — 1979/1983 timeline, 70% share, WordPerfect acquisition.
- [Computerworld: "Mr. NetWare" leaves with Volera](https://www.computerworld.com/article/1572250/mr-netware-leaves-with-volera.html) — the Major/Powell/Neibaur BYU origin of NetWare.

## See Also

- [WordPerfect and Novell Historical Sources](wordperfect-novell-historical-sources.md)

## Open Questions

- Exact peak WordPerfect market-share figures vary by survey and by "DOS vs. Windows vs. legal vertical" framing; the page uses ranges rather than a single number. A primary market-research citation would tighten this.
- A stronger primary source (annual report or SEC filing) for Novell's installed-base and revenue peak would raise confidence on specific numbers.