Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of Adobe

Question

Here is some general information about the history of Adobe for new users. But later on quotes from Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of Adobe.
1) In 2005 Adobe buys Macromedia:
"On April 18, 2005 Adobe Systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion."
Great! Just buy out competitors and add their programs to your portfolio:
ColdFusion, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver.
2) In 2009 Adobe buys Omniture
Shantanu Narayen led the $1.8 billion acquisition of Omniture, Inc.
In a press release, Adobe's president and CEO Shantanu Narayen called the deal a "game changer for both Adobe and our customers"
There is no denying that. Adobe knows how to change the game. Usually without any warning or consideration to the end user whatsoever.
Quote from Shantanu Narayen:
"When you think about digital media, Adobe is already the largest provider of tools and services for the creative community. Everybody is re-tooling for the future of web - devising strategies for new and multiple screens (television, mobile, tablet/PC)and app stores. With devices like photoshop touch and cloud-based services, we are aggressively moving towards that shift."
Adobe? Agressive? No, no, no. You must be thinking of a different Adobe.
wikipedia.org:
"Critics have accused Omniture of attempting to hide the fact they are collecting data. Critics claim they do this by sending the information to a domain name that looks and sounds similar to an IP address used to connect to devices on the local network and not the Internet. This has led to speculation that the domain name is used to trick users or firewall rules."
Sounds like something Adobe would want to own alright.
3) In 2012 Adobe buys Behance
Quote from the Behance blog:
"Our mission to connect and empower the creative world is getting a big boost today. Our team is thrilled to join Adobe and take Behance to the next level. We’ve been given an opportunity to influence creative work, careers, and the creative industry on a grand scale, and we intend to do just that."
Sigh, please don't. just don't. We are being influenced enough as it is.
Quote from Shantanu Narayen (December 2012):
"I'm pleased to report we delivered record revenue of $1,153,000,000 in Q4. This performance helped us achieve record revenue of $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2012."
At the very high expense of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Time will tell how strong your monopoly really is.
Shantanu Narayen:
"At Adobe, we're focused on 2 large market opportunities: Digital Media and Digital Marketing. 2012 was a milestone year in terms of innovation with our Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud. We achieved great success in both these areas."
Shantanu Narayen:
"Adobe is changing how we provide value to a broader set of customers. We will deliver customized offerings for individuals, workgroups and large enterprises. As with all successful subscription services, we're offering a free trial program. This enables an easy on-ramp and a funnel of prospects that we intend to convert to paying subscribers."
Turning us into future Cloud drug addicts, The first one's always free! Thanks Adobe!
"We have begun transitioning enterprise customers to enterprise term license agreements, which provide them cloud services and updates to our desktop tools. Pricing for each segment is designed to reward loyal customers and aggressively transition them to the cloud."
Once again. Adobe? Agressive? Surely you jest!
"An advisory agency, Brendan Wood International, had ranked the 'Top Gun CEOs'  for 2009 based on their ability to make smart acquisitions, make themselves visible and expand the company's value propositions, among other things."
"Shantanu Narayen has been in the industry for a very long time and always has a strong sense of what the next key steps are in terms of positioning the company in the industry."
Yeah well, I guess you can't always be right.
"When Adobe announced in 2003 it was introducing product "collections and suites", customers and industry watchers wondered about Adobe's motivations. Was it all about money? Ultimately Adobe's Creative Suite of products became the standard.
Narayen anticipates a similar kind of embrace for Adobe CC. "A few years from now, people will say, 'How could I even imagine a Photoshop that was not connected to the cloud?'"
Dark times ahead indeed if that happens.
Quote from Shantanu Narayen - May 2013:
"And finally, in monetization, whether it's video that's going to increasingly move to IP networks, whether it's physical retailers who are increasingly moving their business online, I think the more we can transact business and close the loop with respect to monetization, we think that, that's a big opportunity available for us as Adobe."
Yes, having a monopoly sure is awesome. Not having to deal with those pesky free market systems.
Shantanu Narayen:
"A strategy that we outlined over a couple of years ago is really through the combination of what we call the Creative Cloud and the Marketing Cloud, to really have a complete solution that provides this integrated platform across the entire content life cycle."
In other words, Adobe will get its greedy little hands on everything we could possibly want to do. And aggressively force us to go along with it.
And finally a quote from Steve Jobs when talking about a music subscription service:
“I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.”
Let's face it. This 'Cloud scheme' is all about the money. It has no real extra value to us, the ''valued and loyal customers'. The only way to possibly change this as some other users have said on this forum is to vote with your wallet. That's the only thing that matters to the people at the top of Adobe. Money money money.
Customer satisfaction? Adobe doesn't care. Customer loyalty? Adobe doesn't care. And the sad thing is. Eventually we will tire from complaining and just conform to this sad new reality...

Answer 1

You are not viewd by anyone at Adobe as anything but $$$$$$$$$$$$$
Your art your soul or anything else do not matter what matters is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$
From Adobe to wall street
current and thereby driving higher average revenue per user. Additionally, our shift to a subscription model will increase the amount of recurring revenue that is ratably reported, driven by broader Creative Cloud adoption over the next several years.
To assist with the understanding of this transition and the related shift in revenue described above, we are using certain performance metrics to assess the health and trajectory of our overall Digital Media segment.
These metrics include the total number of current paid subscriptions and Annualized Recurring Revenue ("ARR"). We define ARR as the sum of:
� the number of current paid subscriptions, multiplied by the average subscription price paid per user per month, multiplied by twelve months; plus,
� twelve months of contract value of Enterprise Term License Agreements ("ETLAs") where the revenue is ratably recognized over the life of the contract.
In addition, we expect renewal rates associated with Creative Cloud, and potentially other subscription offerings, will become key metrics used to measure their performance. Because the majority of Creative Cloud subscriptions have been annual and the Creative Cloud launched in May 2012, we have not yet reached the first anniversary of these annual subscriptions and, therefore, we anticipate that meaningful data regarding subscription renewal rates will first become available later in fiscal year 2013.
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES In preparing our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America ("GAAP") and pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, we make assumptions, judgments and estimates that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses, and related disclosures of contingent assets and liabilities. We base our assumptions, judgments and estimates on historical experience and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. On a regular basis, we evaluate our assumptions, judgments and estimates. We also discuss our critical accounting policies and estimates with the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. We believe that the assumptions, judgments and estimates involved in the accounting for revenue recognition, stock-based compensation, business combinations, goodwill impairment and income taxes have the greatest potential impact on our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements. These areas are key components of our results of operations and are based on complex rules requiring us to make judgments and estimates, so we consider these to be our critical accounting policies. Historically, our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to our critical accounting policies have not differed materially from actual results.
With the exception of the discussion below, there have been no significant changes in our critical accounting policies and estimates during the three months ended March 1, 2013, as compared to the critical accounting policies and estimates disclosed in Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended November 30, 2012.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements