Is Adobe embracing the cloud a sign of the times?

Ryan Daws| Cloudcomputing-news

Recent headlines are full of companies moving towards SaaS (software as a service) models. Many of these are perky start-ups utilising new opportunities, whilst others are high-profile players like Adobe, which has announced going forward that its “Creative Suite” products will exist solely in the cloud.

Adobe, at the annual “MAX” event, has completely re-branded the companies most well-known Creative products which consists of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro. Each will now gain a CC moniker (e.g. Photoshop CC) which represents “Creative Cloud”.

The blog post announcing the changes quotes: “As the world changes, so must the tools and services we use to create. This presents a unique opportunity to re-imagine the creative process.”

Interestingly, Adobe has also made the decision to kill off web-design tool ‘Fireworks’. The product was only used by a small subset of users, but very diehard fans.

Adobe says in a post on the Fireworks blog that they’ve “decided not to update Fireworks to CC and instead will focus on developing new tools to meet our customers’ needs.”

The current Creative Suite, dubbed ‘CS6’, was only released six months ago and although no new features will be introduced, it will be updated with security fixes and support for major releases of Windows and Mac OS.

Piracy rates which surrounded these products may well have been a factor in Adobe’s decision; it’s much harder to reverse-engineer a product which exists in the cloud.

Creative Cloud represents the monumental shift companies are taking to move their products online, where especially for a company like Adobe it has its advantages. Customers will be able to access their software wherever they are and pay only as they need products; whilst Adobe can easily rollout new features and benefit from increased security.

According to a report from Gartner, SaaS is on the rise in organisations. According to its survey investments in SaaS are expected to increase across all regions; 77% of respondents expected to increase spending, while 17% planned to keep it stable.

Companies including Microsoft with their ‘Office365’ suite are staying up-to-date with this trend, catering for business with a range of online tools from Office products including Word, to web-conferencing and website hosting solutions.

To access the new Creative Cloud of products, users will have to pay $29.99 per month for a single application, or $49.99 for the full Creative Cloud bundle. The new suite will be released in June.