Adobe’s cloud channel play: business as usual

Adobe has undertaken a fundamental shift in the way it sells its software, with the company moving its software to the cloud. Customers will purchase Adobe Creative Cloud Suite on a subscription basis, with perpetual licenses being eradicated.

The only boxed software that will continue to be offered is Creative Suite 6, said Adobe’s local MD, Paul Robson, in an interview. However new features won’t be available to CS6 users, but they will be rolled out to Cloud users on a continual basis.

“From our perspective it’s a bold statement,” said Robson. “It’s a strategic shift towards cloud based offerings [and I think] we are the first multinational to go so hard into cloud.”

The news for the channel is that it’s pretty much business as usual, however. According to Robson, enterprise customers will still purchase licensing through resellers and the channel.

“Creative Suite for the Cloud for enterprise will still have bespoke enterprise software licensing and volume deals,” he said.

The picture in the mid-market is largely the same, with resellers still selling cloud licensing to customers. “The difference is it’s called Creative Cloud for Teams,” he said. “And software can be managed across the network.”

At the retail level, Creative Cloud Suite will be sold in a manner akin to iTunes music – with download cards validated by the retailer. Robson said the value for retailers is the card system allows them to stock a full range of Adobe software, something that hasn’t generally happened in the past.

There have been some enhancements to the Cloud Creative Suite to bring it to the world of cloud computing. Files can now be accessed on multiple machines and, in the manner of Google’s cloud apps, teams in different locations can work on, and edit files at the same time. “This saves the emailing or file transferring that has traditionally happened in the past,” Robson said.

The actual software files still live on the user’s computer – so the real cloud aspect of the Suite is in the collaboration tools, as well as the monthly subscription validation scheme. In essence, the user is now renting the software, rather than buying it outright.