I've just been catching up on the changes at Xara, and frankly, it doesn't look promising for the future. Matt's letter talks about a passionate user base, which is true, but at the same time Xara's focus is now clearly on the cloud--and not their traditional market or current user base--but to one they hope will be stronger.

Unfortunately, I've seen too many tech companies make this kind of pivot to a market they assume is bigger and more lucrative than the one they have. Creating a spinoff to do this is a good way to test the market, but redirecting the entire established brand of the company is not.

There are already other solutions like this online with established user bases, such as lucidpress, scribus, flipbuilder, fatpaint... Then there are the established and popular online web builders, such as wix, weeby and squarespace, all of which have huge user based and large marketing budgets.

Not to mention the online content tools from the giants: Google/G-Suite, Microsoft Office Online are the mass-market corporate online solutions, and the Xara site doesn't present any compelling reason for corporations to choose Xara's new offering over those established brands. In the past, focusing on "The Enterprise" has been a way to think you're getting a huge market, but, reaching that market means going through giants you simply can't compete with.

If Xara wants to go to the cloud, they should work on offer an online subscription for Xara Designer on cloud-based servers that can be accessed on almost any platform: at the very least Windows, Mac, and ChromeOS. One of the reasons I stick with windows is to use Xara, but if I could run it off the cloud on a ChromeOS computer or tablet, I'd be happy to do that!

Xara could "make it easy" using the graphics engine they already have and create a simplified, touch-friendly interface. Then they'd be among the very first in this new market of online yet powerful graphics editors. They'd be cross-platform, cross-device, and instantly increase their reach and market.

Matt, if you, or anyone else in management are reading this, feel free to contact me directly. I've not only been a very long time passionate user and public advocate of Xara, I've worked with Microsoft, Corel, WordPerfect, Bitstream, and even in their day, NetObjects, Xerox and Ventura. I've seen how these companies were misguided and lost. I don't want to see that happen with Xara which has, unquestionably, one of the very best graphics programs on the planet.