Acrobat.com: Needed to Boost Revenue

Adobe's announcement yesterday that revenue dropped 20% year over year adds some urgency to its move into the productivity suite/document sharing space. Sales have lagged for Creative Suite 4, its main suite for designers and graphic artists, and income from other areas--e.g., commercial use of Flash and AIR, enterprise purchases of its digital rights management, and increased use of Acrobat.com--would no doubt be welcome.

However, I'm not convinced Adobe will have easy going in this space. It has been selling enterprise software for awhile now (I'm thinking, for example, of its LiveCycle Enterprise Suite), but that's still a small portion of its business. Most IT groups don't yet think of Adobe as an IT solution provider. Cisco, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, yes; Adobe, no. There are all kinds of things a vendor needs to rejigger--for example, licenses, support, and documentation--to be a true partner with IT departments. There are really no shortcuts here, as Google as discovered. It just takes time to get good at selling into IT departments, as well as develop the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem.

However, it isn't as if Adobe is completely behind the 8 ball, either. Flash and AIR make it know to development groups; it's been calling on security managers with its LifeCycle product; and it has a solid reputation with creative professionals. It certainly has brand recognition and goodwill going for it; it now just needs to flesh out the delivery and support logistics.

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Yeah they definitely have had a revenue boost since Acrobat.com