STAYING AHEAD Nero’s Man Shows His Cards - Page 2

CDRINFO: Being a leading figure in a profitable and expanding corporation, what are the main ingredients of your success?

J. Corbett: Our people. However I strongly believe that being able to deliver what consumers really want in application software has been a critical factor as well. We’re lucky in having quality people delivering quality products. Put that alongside a loyal and committed customer base, and it’s probably a strong recipe for success in any ones imagination. But at the end of the day, we’re only as good as our customers allow us to be, and that’s why we are totally committed to going that extra length to ensure we keep their faith.

CDRINFO: There is a lot of pressure lately from the European Community, regarding copy protection issues for DVD. Some companies have been forced to stop developing their software or even move overseas to protect their company's advantages. What is your opinion and where does Ahead stand on this issue? Will this impact on Ahead’s plans?

J. Corbett: We totally respect Intellectual Property and the law. So we would never do anything that would undermine this, and put our customers and company at risk.

CDRINFO: A couple of years back, Bill Gates announced optimistic plans regarding Internet TV. How have Ahead and other software companies in general, reacted to Microsoft's plans?

J. Corbett: Well we are expecting the Media Centre approach to become increasingly popular, along with IP based home media servers. This is an area of great interest for us, and there is a definite part for Ahead to play in the future of the Internet based living room. Already some competitors have been following the MS approach with PVR kind of applications, but we are working on a concept beyond that.

CDRINFO: Microsoft was one of the main supporters of Mount Rainier. However, its implementation under the Windows OS has not been announced yet. Has or does Ahead plan to cooperate towards this direction and how closely will UDF writing software (InCD, etc) be related to this effort?

J. Corbett: We’ve been spending a lot of energy in this direction, and our InCD development team has a significant size. We’re not always privy to what MS plan in their Operating Systems, but there have been plenty of rumours about Longhorn and Mr Rainier packet writing integration. We’ll just have to see, but we are totally committed to UDF and Mr Rainier support in our InCD product.