Hi All,
DevX just emailed these 2 news releases on adobe
buy-out of macromedia;
Another Brick in the Wall: Macromedia Agrees to Become
Part of Adobe Macromedia executives say 'yes' to a
merger with competitor Adobe Systems, leaving
developers to ponder the landscape ahead for Flash,
RIAs, and the PDF format.
Adobe Systems made an eye-widening play Monday,
offering $3.4 billion in stock for rival Macromedia,
which, if approved by stockholders, will move Adobe
more fully into the developer marketplace and give it
critical access to�and control over�one of the most
widely accessible desktop runtimes, the Flash Player.
While the full details of Adobe's plans�including the
non-trivial issue of how it will handle competing,
duplicative product lines (see Table 1) in the long
term�will be revealed over time, it's clear that the
ubiquity of the Flash Player is an asset that Adobe
can leverage in its efforts to transform the PDF file
format. The company has already undertaken to reinvent
the PDF format, offering interactivity and the option
for developers to use PDF data and documents as part
of a larger application, reading and writing data out
of PDF forms. Supporting PDF through a programmatic
platform opens up a new realm for developers, but
allowing that interactivity to be delivered via the
Flash Player would give end users the ability to take
an end run around the heavy and staid Acrobat Reader.
Table 1. Macromedia and Adobe Product Overlap
For the time being, Adobe plans to continue offering
Macromedia products under the Macromedia brand, but
several products in the companies' lineup are closely
competitive.
Macromedia Adobe Product
Freehand Illustrator Vector-based drawing tools
Dreamweaver GoLive Web page creation tools
Fireworks Photoshop Graphics production
Contribute InCopy Content management
Already many analysts and industry experts are
pointing to this merger as an opportunity for
Macromedia to seriously threaten Microsoft's plans to
dominate in the delivery of rich Internet application
(RIAs), using the XAML-fueled Avalon UI technology
under development in Longhorn. While Macromedia has
already made considerable headway in this segment (the
company's Flex product already provides a server-side
environment for creating RIAs that use the Flash
Player on the client side), Adobe brings two
significant additional assets to the battle: a
considerable base of enterprises that would see great
business upside in bringing their static PDF assets
into an RIA environment; and money.
Even better, RIAs deployed via the Flash Player are
inherently cross-platform capable, while Microsoft's
efforts are primarily tied to Windows. But while Adobe
can certainly advance Macromedia technology and
improve their power play, ultimately they'll have to
offer compelling reasons for developers to choose
Macromedia technology over the native Windows
environment and powerful development tools Microsoft
already offers. Those who require platform neutrality
already have such Java-based alternatives as Nexaweb
and Sun's open source JDesktop Network Components.
Adobe and Macromedia executives are betting big on the
ubiquity of Flash and a broad dependency on PDF to
fuel a footrace against the oncoming Longhorn
juggernaut. But with both companies having grown up on
the patronage of small business customers and
individual developers and graphic artists, they'll
have to manage the details of this confluence very
carefully, lest they pursue growth at the expense of
their bread and butter.
Adobe, Macromedia Deeper than PDF/Flash
Adobe's (Quote, Chart) $3.4 billion plan to acquire
its closest rival Macromedia is expected to create a
major shift in the multimedia publishing and online
graphics software market.
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen and executives declined to give
future details but he called the combination of the
No. 1 and No. 2 Web development software vendors a
strategic growth opportunity and not just a
consolidation. Each company supports nearly 40
different software applications and touts millions of
developers.
Once the ink is dry on the paperwork, the two sides
are pledged to combine in a number of verticals,
including the mobile and enterprise sectors. Adobe
said it would also find ways of making its PDF
standard more compelling by enhancing it with
Macromedia's Flash technology.
"If I look at it from a developer or a content
developer standpoint, this is a good thing," Manuel
Morales, a spokesman from Japan-based Access, told
internetnews.com. The company uses Adobe and Flash
standards to create digital content from TV to
automobile telematics.
"It is good to have a broad range of platforms that
you can work with. I'm hoping to see what they do with
scalable vector graphics and the Flash standard."
Microsoft (Quote, Chart) is the most obvious player
for Adobe and Macromedia to compete with because they
overlap with Redmond's digital media creation,
distribution and management tools.
"Microsoft has incredible developer tools, but Adobe
has PDF and Flash is very compelling," Paul Colton,
CEO of Xamlon, told internetnews.com. "Flash is
underutilized and Macromedia and Adobe both realize
it. Now there are new opportunities to use Flash in
more places with the help of 10s of millions of
developers instead of the one million Macromedia
supports now."
Xamlon software lets developers use any .NET-based
programming platform, including C# and Visual Basic
instead of using Macromedia's Flash MX tool, for
example.
But Kevin Lynch, chief software architect at
Macromedia, told internetnews.com that Adobe and
Macromedia will be more about PDF and Flash, and that
the combo will certainly broaden its scope past
Microsoft.
The companies said they would continue to develop
further projects, including the Flash 8 player,
code-named Maelstrom, and authoring tool, code-named
8Ball. Lynch also said Macromedia would continue its
plans for FlashCast. The system lets mobile phone
carriers use different Flash-based applications.
"I think it is very exciting and the products will be
powerful together and individually," Lynch said. "This
is a very active space, and we got to a point where
the companies were complimentary enough to where it
feels like the frenetic Internet bubble time except
that we were competing heavily in the marketplace."
Indeed, in terms of platforms, Lynch identifies
Dynamic HTML, Java and Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript +
XML) as opportunities for Flash to become the dominant
player. Why not? The company boasts that 98.2 percent
of the desktops in the world have Flash technology
embedded in them. Macromedia has taken that advantage
and targeted Flash beyond the browser.
While Chizen declined to talk about consolidation,
Macromedia and Adobe have some overlapping products
such as Adobe's GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver;
FreeHand and Illustrator; and Fireworks with either
Photoshop or Illustrator.
The combination of Adobe and Macromedia is also
expected to contend with Apple, (Quote, Chart) Real
Networks, (Quote, Chart) and Microsoft for real media
and video playback. The combined company already would
have dominance over Quark and Corel in the publishing
sector. Enterprise customers will also be able to take
advantage of the Macromedia purchase as Adobe looks to
connect and communicate with Interactive forms and
intelligent documents, Lynch said.
"If you look at Acrobat as an asynchronous
collaboration tool and Breeze as a real-time
collaboration tool, for example, you begin to see we
can provide the channel with a more complete
solution," Lynch said.
One area that may give Adobe and Macromedia pause is
Microsoft's graphics subsystem, code-named Avalon, in
its next version of Windows. The subsystem is key to
the upcoming Windows Longhorn operating system.
Xamlon's Colton points out that Avalon is specifically
for the desktop and only on Windows XP, while Flash
can run on multiple operating systems and different
form factors.
But perhaps most important, Access's Morales said
Adobe and Macromedia are expected to shift their
approach to collecting royalties.
"Flash is free on the desktop so Macromedia has made
their money selling new versions and upgrades to its
application development tools," Morales said. "In the
mobile space, the common method is to charge royalties
by the number of handsets deploying the technology."
Morales said both companies could turn the opportunity
into a profit maker but need to be wary of work itself
into a corner.
"What it does is drive up the price of handsets, which
should come down if the market matures. We are seeing
large pick up in Korea and Japan, as well as in the
United States with Verizon's high-speed network in the
mobile market coming online." Array
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