Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/65907
n n n n Trends & Technology Business Adobe hopes to stay on the forefront with its latest vision involving the cloud and subscriptions By Kathleen Maher It's way, Adobe has been lucky because some of its prime markets are very sensitive to economic cycles, and the company went through tough times earlier than some of its competitors in related sectors. true that hard times foster change and in- novation. In a perverse rocket ride with interactive media, including CDs. Adobe has been a leader in desktop publishing. Both of those industries saw early challenges. The film and TV industry served by Adobe's video products is a leading indica- tor of economic headwinds. There are many other examples from Adobe's product lines, Consider this: Macromedia enjoyed a sky- Adobe laid the groundwork for its new strategy at its Max Conference for the user community. CTO Kevin Lynch explains the new products on a stage set that communicated the cloud to even the most obtuse attendee. 32 April/May 2012 but the point is, the company has adaptation built into its DNA from its very early days. By the time the desktop publishing business seri- ously went south in 2009–2010, the company was already thinking about how to re-invent publishing for the enterprise. With the Cre- ative Suite (CS) line, Adobe was creating the strongest competition to its industry-leading point products, including Photoshop, Illustra- tor, and Dreamweaver. The company shared its most audacious vision several months ago during the Max Con- ference of 2011, as CTO Kevin Lynch outlined plans to enable collaboration throughout its products via the Internet. The company an- nounced it was making a full-scale commitment to the cloud and also to a subscription model for its products. At the same time, Senior Vice President and General Manager David Wadh- wani campaigned among investors to prepare them for the shift to new business models. Users have been nervous about what the new model would mean to them, but the investors have been getting the overall picture. Adobe understands its customer base better than most companies. It actively pursues registration and provides forums, tutorials, and other incentives to keep customers actively communicating. In its presentations to investors, Adobe said that according to its calculations, customers buy- ing the Creative Suite products and upgrading with varying degrees of frequency each provide about $30 a month to the company. And, as a result of early testing of subscriptions, Adobe estimated those customers would provide $40 a month. Easy math. In the first week of February, Wadhwani ad- dressed the analyst community again to share the company's plans and experience with the early stages of rolling out its cloud content. At the same time, the company hosted press briefings and brought key users up to date. This is an important move for the company, and it wants to get the message right. Wadhwani says that in early tests of user reactions to subscriptions, customers were overwhelmingly positive. Yes, that is what they all say, but he also notes that the online and subscription pricing was fairly ambitious. The company tested out its Creative Cloud with consumers at higher prices, ranges that includ- ed $69 to $129, and still got good response. Better yet, says Wadhwani, the firm got a bump in new users. From the trial, 40 percent came on as new users. As a result, the compa- ny realizes it can meet its targets and charge a more attractive monthly rate. Adobe contends the average monthly subscription price will be $49.99. Subscriptions also will be available for enterprise customers at $60 a month. Accord- ing to Wadhwani, the company expects to see 800,000 new users by 2015 as a result of the subscription model. The Creative Cloud Adobe's new products will be rolling out gradually through the year. People who sign up for the Creative Cloud when it debuts in March will get CS6 when it arrives. Along the way, we'll see the next version of Photoshop (Adobe upgraded all its products for CS5.5 except Photoshop). The company isn't releasing details about CS6, but Photoshop Product Manager Zora- na Gee has a short teaser on YouTube dem- onstrating "background save" for Photoshop, enabling people to stop and save huge files in the background while working on something else. She also showed GPU acceleration for the Liquify tool. It's pretty specialized—Liquify is a filter that lets you squish the pixels. We're thinking the demonstration is an indication Photo courtesy JPR.