Knowledge@Wharton published an extensive article about the new position of Adobe within the Software-Industry, specially after the acquisition of Macromedia.
having completed its acquisition of Macromedia on December 3, 2005, Adobe is the fifth largest software company in the world.
Adobe currently controls two of the dominant formats for electronic content — the Adobe Acrobat PDF format for electronic documents and the Flash SWF format for interactive web content.[…]
Adobe’s vision is grand. CEO Bruce Chizen hopes that Adobe will provide the interface for any device with a screen — “from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.” Such ambitions put Adobe squarely in the sights of Microsoft, which currently dominates desktop software development.
And Microsoft is moving quickly to counter Adobe’s moves. It has announced a number of products poised to compete directly with Adobe’s core products. Microsoft’s strategy includes, among other initiatives, positioning elements of the forthcoming Windows Presentation Foundation to compete with Adobe’s Acrobat and Flash applications, and potentially undercutting Adobe’s profitable Acrobat product line by including PDF creation in the next version of Microsoft Office. […]
We won’t do a browser. But we do think that there are applications that need to run on the [user’s desktop] client [software] that need to work in both a connected and a non-connected fashion, that require the richness of Flash, the reliability, the relative security, the layout capabilities of PDF — but also need to consume HTML. Imagine a ubiquitous client that allows you to do all three of those — and then a series of programming tools, like [Adobe’s] Flex, making it easy for anyone to develop applications for this ubiquitous client. […]
Our intent is not to be in the services business as a business objective unto its own. We are in the services business. I think we have more than 100 people out in the field today who do services. […] Plus, we want those services people to be able to train third-parties, like Accenture, like IBM Global Services, like the Indian professional services companies Tata and Infosys, and so on. So, it’s not our intent to be in the services business per se, but we know, as an enterprise software company, it’s necessary for us to be in the services business. […]
We used Macromedia as an opportunity to reorganize the company. At that point we wanted to put the right people in the right job. Also, there are a number of Adobe executives who have been here a while, who made a lot of money, and saw it as an opportunity to do something else with their life on the personal side. […]
We will do more software as services. With Breeze’s real-time collaboration we already do hosting. We will continue with CreatePDF Online. And you will see us begin to experiment with other services, either directly or through aggregators like SalesForce.com. There are probably things we could add to their AppExchange that could be of interest to others. […]
If we execute appropriately we will be the engagement platform, or the layer, on top of anything that has an LCD display, any computing device — everything from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.
Our software [will be] delivered as a service, either charging the consumer directly, the network provider directly or using an advertising model.
I believe Adobe’s focus will continue to be on those applications that help people and organizations in areas where the presentation of the information makes a difference.