Quark Names Raymond Schiavone President & CEO

The offices of CEO and pres­i­dent have been vacant since the depar­ture of Kamar Aulakh under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in June 2005. Aulakh had cap­tained the Denver, Colorado-based multi­na­tion­al pub­lish­ing soft­ware mak­er for 19 months before his depar­ture. It was nev­er clar­i­fied by the privately-held cor­po­ra­tion whether Aulakh elect­ed to leave or was asked to leave by sole share­hold­er Fred Ebrahimi.

During the search for a new leader, senior vice pres­i­dent of com­merce prod­uct devel­op­ment, Linda Chase, was appoint­ed by Quark’s board of direc­tors to act as inter­im president.

Announced to Quark’s world­wide employ­ees yes­ter­day, and pub­li­cal­ly today, Quark has named Raymond Schiavone as the new per­ma­nent pres­i­dent and CEO.

Photo of Raymond Schiavone from a 2005 Arbortext exec­u­tive profile

Schiavone for­mer­ly held the posi­tions of pres­i­dent and CEO of Arbortext, Inc., a soft­ware mak­er whose chief area of exper­tise is enterprise-level pub­lish­ing soft­ware and XML-based pub­lish­ing work­flow sys­tems. In 2005 Arbortext, Inc. was acquired by PTC (NASDAQ: PMTC) Before Arbortext, Schiavone was pres­i­dent of TPN Register, LLC, a joint ven­ture between General Electric’s Global eXchange
Service (NASDAQ: GE) and Thomas Publishing. He came to TPN Register by way of 14 years as an exec­u­tive with GE. He was a grad­u­ate of GE’s pres­ti­gious Corporate Audit Staff and Information Management Leadership pro­grams, and holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Maryland and a bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree from Syracuse University. Schiavone is also a board mem­ber at the University of Maryland Engineering School. 

In the press release issued today, Quark Chairman of the Board Farah “Sasha” Ebrahimi is quot­ed as say­ing: “This impor­tant change sig­nals a new era for Quark. [Ray Schiavone] has exact­ly what we need to aggres­sive­ly take Quark to the next lev­el. His in-depth expe­ri­ence grow­ing glob­al soft­ware com­pa­nies will ben­e­fit our cus­tomers, our part­ners and our employees.”

Schiavone him­self stat­ed: “Over the com­ing years, our cus­tomers will see us not only grow­ing our prod­uct line, but also pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al val­ue through expand­ed strate­gic part­ner­ships and focus on cus­tomer ser­vice and support.”

The two state­ments direct­ly con­flict with for­mer CEO Aulakh’s state­ments in a 2004 inter­view with the Journal of Newspaper Technology, and hint at the pos­si­ble rea­sons behind Aulakh’s departure.

In that inter­view, then Quark CEO and pres­i­dent for ten months, Aulakh said of the com­pa­ny’s chief com­pe­ti­tion: “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.”

Adobe, he said, has “always fol­lowed” Quark.

Does Quark’s recent­ly cre­at­ed Enterprise Products divi­sion as well as the appoint­ment of Schiavone, whose entire career has been in man­ag­ing enterprise-level prod­ucts, sig­nal that Quark is fol­low­ing Adobe in the lat­ter’s tran­si­tion from a desk­top prod­uct focus to enter­prise at all costs?

Is it time for a new Quark, Inc. motto–Tools for the New Quark?

Throughout today Schiavone will meet with most of Quark’s employ­ees around the world via video­con­fer­ence and tele­con­fer­ence. According to an inter­nal Quark mem­o­ran­dum pro­vid­ed yes­ter­day to Quark VS InDesign​.com, the new chief exec­u­tive will also intro­duce him­self in per­son over the next few months by tour­ing Quark’s offices in England, Switzerland, India, and elsewhere.

After assist­ing in Schiavone’s accli­ma­tion to the office, Chase will step down to lead Quark’s new enter­prise prod­ucts divi­sion as senior vice president.