With Creative Cloud, US software maker Adobe has dispensed with its pay-once-use-always business model and moved on to a subscription service, paving the way for the company to offer its expensive products at much affordable rates, curb rampant piracy and to expand its revenues
Adobe software are virtually ubiquitous on modern-day personal computers. Be it Photoshop, Flash Player, Reader, or Illustrator they have earned permanent spots on desktops and laptops around the globe. However, while many of these hold sway in their respective fields, they have also suffered incessant malware peddling and recently, a plethora of reports about being targeted by hackers. Ergo, Adobe Creative Cloud, its latest offering to its customers, is not just one of the ways to curb rampant piracy, but also, in a smart move to expand revenues, offer their erstwhile expensive products at much affordable rates.
With Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems? software will now be delivered on a different vehicle, meaning it has dispensed with its pay-once-use-always business model and moved on to a subscription service. You pay for what you use. Its products will be available on a one-month subscription or a yearly subscription.
First introduced in the US, Australia, Japan, England, France and the Netherlands in May 2012, Creative Cloud has just reached the Indian shores. Umang Bedi, Adobe managing director (South Asia) explains the reason behind the delay, ?We realised that the Indian market and the developing market is different. First is the size of the market.
India, today, has twice the number of creative professionals than the US and this market has one unique characteristic: they have the ability to create great content but the internet connectivity is very poor. So, how will cloud work? We ran experiments and we realised that we needed something different for India. We are different because the software does not reside on the cloud, it does not get streamed from the cloud, it resides on your computer and you do not need to be connected to the internet. We took some time to come here because we were building the infrastructure to support India.?
Bottom line is that Creative Cloud is merely a software subscription, not a cloud-based solution. You can work offline as you always did. Adobe merely checks once a month to make sure your subscription is active. ?We realised that in the creative world we are dealing with heavy file sizes and content. Now this model is being offered across the globe. In the developed markets people are using full online connectivity. In India, enterprises will use the full connected model. But in any small businesses, which is the bulk of the market, the offline model will be preferred,? adds Bedi.
In India, the company has launched Creative Cloud targeting teams and small and medium businesses (SMBs) with a promotional pricing of R2,885 per user per month. Once the offer ends on April 30 this year, it will be priced at R4,040 per user per month. In contrast, Adobe?s CS6 Master Suite costs R1.76 lakh plus a 20% charge per annum for support. This means that customers will pay around 50% less for the cloud service. Adobe will be launching Creative Cloud for individuals and enterprises in the very near future, says Bedi. And for those who have already paid a lump sum amount for their Creative Suite packages, he says that they have launched a special offer to help them move to the cloud service.
Since its launch last year, Creative Cloud software subscription service appears to have been doing extremely well. Confirms Bedi, ?From May to Dec 2012 we have added one million new customers and we are adding 10,000 paid customers per week in five countries. This is more than we have ever added in the past ten years. Once it goes down to the world, to India, China and other countries, the growth would be tremendous. Plus it gives us predictability in our revenue. We were hovering around $30 in November when we announced this, it has gone up to $41.5, it has increased our market cap by 25%.?
With Creative Cloud, Adobe is also revamping its marketing suite, Adobe Marketing Cloud. It is trying to improve the ability for digital marketing professionals to work with creative professionals by linking both the services. Explains Bedi, ?While Creative Cloud will help you create the content and the applications, the Marketing Cloud gives you a complete set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, and web experience management solutions. These two clouds are integrated over Digital Asset Management (DAM). You can take the content from Creative Cloud and publish it on the Marketing Cloud. It will help you personalise the experience towards the specific audience, help you deliver targeted personalised experiences, measure in real time what?s happening around the behaviour and optimise your investment. We are taking the creative to the next level of marketing.?
Security has always been one of the biggest concerns of internet-based cloud services. However, Adobe claims that it is providing the best protection for its customers against hackers. ?All the data is stored on the local machine. When you sync it with cloud, two things happen, the authentication of who you are and the actual file transfer. 266-bit encryption is the highest form of encryption available today. Our authentication and our two-way communication is encrypted using 256-bit encryption. Our data centres are certified for five global certifications for security,? assures Bedi.