Adobe “shifting its business model”: more publishing, less programming

Adobe has announced a shift in its business strategy, together with the loss of around 750 employees.

So what is changing? Adobe says it will be focusing on digital media and digital marketing, while investing less in “certain enterprise solution product lines.” In line with this strategy, Adobe acquired video advertising company auditude last week.

Here are the things which Adobe says are “important elements” in its new approach:

  • Creative Suite extended with tablet apps and delivered through the cloud
  • Greater investment in HTML 5: Dreamweaver, Edge and PhoneGap
  • Flash positioned for “advanced” web, video, and mobile apps
  • Digital publishing solutions
  • Video advertising
  • Document services such as electronic contracts and signatures

So what will Adobe be doing less? This is harder to discern as the releases, naturally enough, say less about it. The key remark is that:

the company will reduce its investment, and expected license revenue, in certain enterprise solution product lines

We can conclude, I guess, that the Digital Enterprise Platform once known as LiveCycle is going to get less attention as the company focuses more on digital content and less on providing a platform for enterprise applications. I would guess that this will impact the middleware services more than things like the Flex framework and Flash Platform tools, but I am speculating. More information is coming in a financial analyst meeting tomorrow in New York.

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