Together these applications constitute one of the most popular software franchises around. Annually, they’re responsible for generating some $3.8 billion in revenue for Adobe, which has been selling some of them for decades. As the company’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen is responsible for preserving and growing that revenue stream and protecting the legacy of the software that drives it in a fast-changing industry.

That’s no easy task with HTML5 emerging as a threat to Flash on the Web, and tablets evolving from content- consumption devices to content-creation ones. And then there’s Apple. Since 2007, the company has refused to allow Flash on its iOS devices, essentially banning it from one of the most important and popular mobile software platforms today.

All those difficult questions and more, coming up next.

9:19 am: Here we go. Narayen’s appearance on stage is preceded by a short video.

Narayen is being coached on how to answer some of the hardest questions, like ones about HTML5.

Narayen is being a really good sport, by practicing fist bumps.

The coach gives him a lot of praise, saying that he has a man crush on Narayen.

9:22 am: Walt welcomes “the very well-prepared Shantanu Narayen” to the stage.

All joking aside, Walt launches right into it, saying that he wants to talk Flash.

Narayen says that they had an internal bet at the company on how fast Walt would ask about Flash.

Bet’s over!

9:24 am: Flash is really a small part of the company, Narayen argues.

In terms of the revenue, it’s part of a suite of offerings. Since we produce apps that allow you to produce for the Web and print, it’s actually a very small part of the company.

9:25 am: Walt’s not letting him off easy. He wants to know “what’s the deal between you and Steve Jobs?”

Narayen is glad he’s asking! (The interview coaching is already coming in handy from earlier).

It’s become fairly clear that it’s not about technology. It’s about a business model and control over a platform.

It’s control over the app store that’s at issue here. We allow people to author once and get the widest distribution possible. We’ll have 130 million phone devices that have Flash by the end of the year.

Walt says Flash struggles: “I’ve yet to test a phone where it works well on a device.”

9:27 am: Walt wants to go back to the fight with Apple. Is it because of a historical issue?

Narayen goes back to saying it’s a business-model issue: “It’s all about control of the applications running on the platform that lets the platform come to life. If you build in Flash, you can run the apps on other platforms.”

9:29 am: Walt asks about the work-around that Adobe has created since Flash isn’t available on iOS devices.

Narayen says Flash can run on an iOS device if it’s within an AIR application. “If you can build an app using our tools, and if you run it through AIR, it can be in the App Store.”

Walt asks if that’s good enough for Adobe.

Narayen: “We put customers front and center. Developers are using our tools, but it’s an extra step….We will work around any obstacles that are in our way because our goal is to help developers get their apps out.”

9:31 am: Walt’s changing the conversation to HTML5. It’s not mature, but it’s coming along. People say it will replace Flash.

Narayen addresses the threat:

“We welcome the evolution to HTML5, and are actively contributing to it.”

Good question from Walt: Why would you do that if it competes with Flash?

Narayen says they make money from selling the tools for helping to reduce the complexity to the user for producing content, so its inherent business model can remain the same.

9:34 am: Narayen gives an example of this new reality. Wired magazine is using its digital publishing suite. The suite allows them to create an app for Android, iOS and other platforms.

Walt asks, it’s that simple? The argument is over? No more nasty calls between Adobe and Apple?

Narayen says, yep, he’s excited about the future. It’s an argument that the press likes to continue bringing up.

9:40 am: Walt and Narayen advance the conversation to Adobe’s Omniture unit, which measures activity on the Web.

Walt wants to know why every single provider is all over the map, and there are no standards or consistency on measurement from all the various providers, like Nielsen.

Narayen says they measure every single click.

Walt interjects that those numbers are completely different than what Nielsen says. He knows this because of his relationship with AllThingsD.com.

Narayen says he’s very hopeful that there will be standards soon. It’s crucial if we want advertising dollars to continue shifting online from other media.

9:43 am: Walt wants Narayen’s opinion on the revolution of tablets. Are they consumption or production devices?

Narayen says he thinks they are real. “I think tomorrow they will be equally productive devices. We’ll provide all of our creative tools on these devices. You’ve already seen us provide Photoshop on tablets.”

“Our creative community will share images on these devices. You can do a touch-up on a tablet, and it syncs up with your computer.”

9:46 am: Walt asks about moving Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator, to the iPad.

Narayen says you can mix colors with a tactile feeling on the iPad and then move that back over to the computer.

For more on how Photoshop interacts with the iPad, check out this AllThingsD story from earlier this year.

Walt wants to know about non-iPad tablets. Is there an opportunity there?

Narayen is bullish: “There will be another 20 tablets that will come by the end of the year that will push the industry in different directions–video production and tablets with a stylus. I think the community is vibrant. I’m really excited.”

In particular, he names Android as the rising star: “What you saw with smartphones hitting an inflection point with Android, you’ll see it again with tablets.”

Also, he sees both HP and RIM gaining traction in the enterprise.

“The real platform war is the Internet. I think it’s so early in the evolution. I think Facebook has an opportunity to ask ‘what does a Facebook app look like on the tablet?’ I think there’s still a huge opportunity to connect to people on these devices.”

9:51 am: Time for questions from the audience.

A question about the cloud.

Narayen said that you’ll see Adobe using the cloud to deliver tools as cloud offerings, but also leveraging it to enable collaboration among several users.

Next question is about creating tools for companies, like Zynga, which creates games for social networks, like Facebook.

Narayen says there are companies that build entire sites and enterprise applications in Flash. He says that they have to build their tools to the highest standards to support them.

Flash has multiple components, Narayen said. It has video and gaming on a variety of devices.

Walt wants to know why things don’t work sometimes.

Narayen offers to sit down with Walt some time, so he can see exactly what he’s referring to because he doesn’t know.

9:57 am: An audience member asks about privacy and Flash cookies. (No, this isn’t when cookies are sold really quickly until the inventory runs out.)

Narayen is doing a lot of work on this front to make sure it’s clear to consumers. In particular, they are working with browser vendors to be synced up on opting in and out, so there’s consistency in the browser and plug-ins.

That’s it folks. Thanks for reading. Next up, another demo and then we have AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega.

The suite–dubbed Acrobat X–builds on features introduced in 2008 in Acrobat 9, which allows users to embed and view video, Web pages and other dynamic content in PDF files. (The Adobe-originated technology stands for portable document format, for those thay may have forgotten).

By allowing users to include a wide variety of content in PDF files, Adobe hopes to capitalize on “the need that people have today to communicate with a lot more rich media” and eliminate the need for users to send different types of content in separate files, says Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president of Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions unit.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Investment bankers and stock markets can calm down–Microsoft and Adobe are not in talks about an acquisition.

Spurred by a story in the New York Times that Microsoft was eyeing the software company for purchase, Adobe (ADBE) stock went wild today, up 11.5 percent to $28.69.

Except, according to numerous sources at both companies with whom I talked today, it’s “nonsense.”

Sure, it might be an interesting idea–kind of like AOL (AOL) and Yahoo (YHOO) merging–but that’s not the case at this point either.

Chalk this one up to blabby bankers and stock speculators–this might be a good rumor for regulators to look into.

Of course, as is typical, the execs at both companies talk a lot–you might have noticed that Adobe has a lot of software that is popular on the Windows operating system.

So, they had a meeting!

But it is kind of hard to do an acquisition when “Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s offices to hold a secret meeting with Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen.”

Memo to the Times: When there is an acquisition afoot–in my experience–it’s all private airplanes and law offices and not a company HQ visit by the very loud and very noticeable Ballmer, the exact polar opposite of a shrinking violet.

In any case, it is not a big surprise at this point if longtime rivals like Adobe and Microsoft (MSFT)–which makes a competing video technology called Silverlight to Adobe’s Flash–talk about trying to stop the explosive growth of Apple, especially in the mobile space.

Microsoft is about to launch its Windows Phone 7, after many cloddish efforts in the arena have failed, and Adobe has been subject to a withering attack from Apple (AAPL) and its CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs, in no uncertain terms, has dissed Flash relentlessly as a technology.

Others have not, such as Google (GOOG), which recently showed strong support for Adobe’s Flash in its recent launch of Google TV.

In fact, it is Google that is more mentioned in Silicon Valley as the logical acquirer of Adobe, if there were to be a sale.

Along with all its various assets, such as the Photoshop and Acrobat software that dominates online publishing, Adobe’s Omniture unit is one of the more powerful and popular analytics companies on the Web, which is right in Google’s wheelhouse.

Personally, that’s the one I would bet on, although that’s entirely me speaking.

Until that happens, here is a video interview of Jobs smacking around Adobe and Flash at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101007/adobsoft-nonsense-on-the-microsoft-adobe-rumor-in-any-case-itd-more-likely-be-goodobe/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20100514/chuck-geschke-on-adobe-flash-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20100514/chuck-geschke-on-adobe-flash-apple/#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 10:00:55 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40589 A couple of weeks ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published “Thoughts on Flash,” a 1,671-word execration of Adobe’s Flash platform.

On Thursday, Adobe co-founders and co-chairmen Chuck Geschke and John Warnock followed suit with some thoughts of their own. Their eight-paragraph essay, “Our Thoughts On Open Markets,” mentions Apple only once, but when it does, it is to lambaste the company for its position on Flash, a position the two claim “could undermine this next chapter of the web–the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.”

I spoke to Geschke Thursday afternoon about the pair’s letter, Adobe’s (ADBE) new “We ? Apple” ad campaign and Apple’s (AAPL) stance on his company’s software. Below, a transcript of our conversation.

John Paczkowski: What is Adobe is hoping to get out of this new “We Love Apple/Freedom of Choice” campaign?

Chuck Geschke: We mostly are using it as a way to communicate with our customers and partners to assure them that we’re not going to change our strategy and to inform the rest of the community of what the pluses and minuses are of not supporting Flash on the iPhone and the iPad. Our customers, a large percentage of them, are the people who generate and distribute information and content, and for them they have one production stream that they use to do that and they’ve gotten used to the fact that we’ve worked very hard to open up the standards that we support so that we can offer them ubiquity of output on all kinds of platforms. So the fact that Apple is precluding that puts them in a tough position because it means that they’re going to have to create that content twice, and that’s not very productive. It’s certainly more expensive than what they do today. And as you know, the content industry is an industry under a lot of cost pressure these days.

JP: Both Apple and Microsoft have said publicly now that Flash has issues with reliability, security, and performance. Do you think those complaints are legitimate?

CG: I think they’re old news. Go to our Web site and read the actual facts about Flash. We enumerate the facts about Flash there as we see them. [Microsoft and Apple] may have a different set of facts that they believe are accurate. It’s up to you to decide. But I will tell you that the Flash version we’re coming out with now–where, for the first time with the Mac platform, we can actually get to the lower-level interfaces–is going to run like the wind. And the same is true on Windows.

JP: Shouldn’t Apple have the right to define the means by which apps for its own platform can be written?

CG: They absolutely have the right. No one says they don’t.

JP: Cross-platform mobile apps tend not to take advantage of native features unique to each device. What do you have to say about complaints that write-once-run-anywhere software results in subpar apps?

CG: Well, people don’t say that about Photoshop. They certainly don’t say it about Acrobat….I’m a little confused about what the real examples of that are. If there’s a problem with the performance of Flash as demonstrated on the iPhone, it’s because we haven’t been able to access the inner layers of hardware and software we need to to provide the kind of performance we can provide on other platforms. But that’s Apple’s choice, not ours. And now, of course, you can’t use it at all.

JP: So you don’t think write-once-run-anywhere is limiting at all?

CG: Not really. I mean there may be certain features in certain environments that you’ll want to do customization for, but the more you go down that road, the more you get the experience of HTML on the Web, where the kind of browser, hardware and OS you use determines what your experience. That’s because HTML is not well codified and standardized and people sort of roll their own.

JP: How much of Adobe’s revenue comes from Flash?

CG: I would share that number if we disclose it, but I’m not sure that we do. It isn’t a huge amount of revenue, but it is an extremely popular platform that all of our apps have the opportunity to exploit when it’s distributed everywhere. Flash tools aren’t the largest piece of our business, but it’s a significant one and obviously we feel it’s extremely important to our customers and partners who want to build third-party apps in an environment where they can, in fact, put them on a variety of devices without having to re-implement them.

JP: So could Apple’s exclusion of Flash hurt Adobe sales?

CG: I don’t think it will have a significant effect. As well as Apple is doing, if you look at the number of platforms out in the market and the number of release of new ones that will occur over the next six to 12 months, it’s going to be huge. That’s a much bigger population, and we’re just focusing on making our technology operate as effectively and efficiently as possible for it.

JP: In his “Thoughts on Flash” essay, Jobs accused Adobe of abandoning Apple. “Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products,” he wrote. Is Job’s implication here a fair one?

CG: We never abandoned Apple. Apple now seems to be abandoning at least one aspect of our product line right now. No, we never abandoned them. We’ve always ported our apps simultaneously to both platforms. There have been times when Apple has changed its strategy on hardware or on operating systems that didn’t meet our product cycle, so there have been periods of maybe six months where we didn’t keep up with their latest release. But that’s our own business model; we can only afford to re-implement our products at a certain rate.

We have never, ever abandoned Apple and we don’t want to abandon them today. Everything you read in our new ad is true. I myself own probably between 8 and 10 Macintoshes — both laptops and work stations. I don’t buy PCs, I buy Macs.

JP: Why isn’t Flash an open standard?

CG: It is. What are you talking about?

JP: Flash is proprietary to Adobe. It’s not Open Source. Let me rephrase: Why isn’t Flash an open standard overseen by an open-standards body?

CG: As soon as Adobe acquired Macromedia, we openly published the SWF format and removed the requirement that you have a license to use it….No, we haven’t put Flash out to a standards body yet as we have with PDF and Postscript. But I wouldn’t be shocked if we do someday when it makes sense.

With the standards that we have built and made open to the entire world, we’ve tried our best to get them to the point where they’re mature enough so that we’re not doing design by committee. If you look at the amount of time it will take HTML5 to become a reasonably solid platform, it’s going to take a long time because there are an awful lot of vested interests trying to influence its development.

JP: Any thoughts on Steve Jobs’s claim that “Flash was created during the PC era–for PCs and mice”?

CG: What do you think an iPhone is? It’s a personal computer.

JP: One last question. What do you think of the iPad?

CG: I think it’s a neat thing. I personally have no particular interest in it; I’d much rather have a general-purpose computer. I think there’s definitely a market for that kind of product. We certainly know a lot of people that want to produce content for it and a large percentage of them are disappointed that they’re going to have to do that separately from the way they produce content for all the other devices they support.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Adobe to Apple: You Wanna Hug It Out? Let’s Hug It Out!
• Good Luck With That Alleged Antitrust Complaint Against Apple, Adobe…
• Adobe CTO: Flash on iPhone Doesn’t Suck and Apple Knows It
• A Possible Apple Antitrust Inquiry? Nothing to See Here…
• Microsoft on Flash: What Steve Said
• Adobe: We’re Done With You Too, Apple
• Apple to Adobe: I Know You Are, but What Am I?
• So Much for Flash on the iPhone
• Adobe: Flash for Mac Is Getting Better–Really!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100514/chuck-geschke-on-adobe-flash-apple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090921/adobes-cto-kevin-lynch-talks-but-not-omniture/ http://allthingsd.com/20090921/adobes-cto-kevin-lynch-talks-but-not-omniture/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:15:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=18609

BoomTown went to visit the HQ of Adobe in San Francisco several weeks ago for a chit-chat with its CTO, Kevin Lynch.

We had a lovely discussion about the future of its Flash video technology, as well as of its more recent AIR offering.

Lynch also discussed smart phones and other such devices, although he somehow neglected to mention the then-pending purchase of Omniture (OMTR) by Adobe (ADBE).

That would be the $1.8 billion the company said last week it would fork over for the Web measurement business.

Reaction to the deal has ranged from mixed to WTF? And some consider it an attempt to–as one smart exec put it to me–“buy revenue,” even as Adobe’s other businesses face major challenges ahead.

While the iconic company’s Photoshop and Acrobat software offerings dominate the Web publishing business, Adobe must still deal with the increasing move of all software into the cloud and onto non-PC devices.

And–with Microsoft (MSFT) continuing to aggressively push its own Silverlight online video technology and other companies like Google (GOOG) likely to have more to say in the arena–even the Flash business, which is now installed on more than 90 percent of Web-enabled PCs, will be more challenging than ever.

Lots to think about, so here is Lynch in a video interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090921/adobes-cto-kevin-lynch-talks-but-not-omniture/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090915/measure-this-adobe-buys-web-traffic-counter-omniture-for-1-8-billion/ http://allthingsd.com/20090915/measure-this-adobe-buys-web-traffic-counter-omniture-for-1-8-billion/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:42:29 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11000 What do you do if you’ve got a grip on the Web/design software market? Expand into the Web measurement business, apparently. Adobe, whose Photoshop and Acrobat software offerings dominate the Web publishing business, will pay $1.8 billion to acquire Omniture, whose Web traffic measurement software is that industry’s standard.

Adobe (ADBE) is offering $21.50 in cash for each Omniture (OMTR) share. That’s a 25 percent premium over today’s closing price of $17.32–which includes a large run-up in the last few hours of the day, before trading was halted around 3:45 pm EDT. Good bet the folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission will take a look at that leap.

Release

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090915/measure-this-adobe-buys-web-traffic-counter-omniture-for-1-8-billion/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090220/when-pdfs-attack/ http://allthingsd.com/20090220/when-pdfs-attack/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:00:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13291

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090220/when-pdfs-attack/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090220/heres-a-patch-for-you-adobe-acrobatuninstallexe/ http://allthingsd.com/20090220/heres-a-patch-for-you-adobe-acrobatuninstallexe/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:03:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13265 There’s a critical vulnerability in Adobe’s Reader and Acrobat PDF software and at least one zero-day exploit for them in the wild already. Yet Adobe (ADBE) won’t have a fix in place until March 11, and then only for Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9. Patches for earlier versions of the software will arrive sometime after that.

Two and half weeks or longer to wait for a critical patch.

In the meantime, exploits for the flaw will no doubt grow in number and cunning–a nightmare since the PDF format and Adobe’s related apps are so widely used. “Right now we believe these files are only being used in a smaller set of targeted attacks,” security group Shadowserver said in an advisory on the matter. “However, these types of attacks are frequently the most damaging and it is only a matter of time before this exploit ends up in every exploit pack on the Internet.”

Shadowserver recommends disabling Javascript in Acrobat and Reader to limit exposure to such attacks. There are, of course, other solutions as well–Foxit for Windows users, Preview for Mac users, and Xpdf for Linux users.

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