Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems Incorporated is one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world. We offer a line of creative, business, Web and mobile software and services used by creative professionals, knowledge workers, consumers, original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”), developers and enterprises for creating, managing, delivering, optimizing and engaging with compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. We distribute our products through a network of distributors, value-added resellers (“VARs”), systems integrators, independent software vendors (“ISVs”) and OEMs, direct to end users and through our own Website at www.adobe.com. We also license our technology to hardware manufacturers, software developers and service providers, and we offer integrated software solutions to businesses of all sizes. We have operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”) and Asia. Our software runs on personal computers with Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Linux, UNIX and various non-PC platforms, depending on the product.
Adobe was originally incorporated in California in October 1983 and was reincorporated in Delaware in May 1997. We maintain executive offices and principal facilities at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704. Our telephone number is 408-536-6000. We maintain a Website at www.adobe.com. Investors can obtain copies of our SEC filings from this site free of charge, as well as from the SEC Website at www.sec.gov.
BUSINESS OVERVIEW
For more than 27 years, Adobe software and technologies have helped redefine how people engage with ideas and information—anytime, anywhere and through any medium. The impact of our solutions is evident across many industries and is felt by anyone who creates, views and interacts with information.
Today, through the delivery of powerful design, imaging and publishing software for print, Web, mobile and dynamic media production, and by delivering a technology platform, we help people express, share, manage, optimize and collaborate on their ideas in imaginative and meaningful new ways.
Our strategy is to address the needs of a variety of customers which include creative professionals—graphic designers, Web designers, videographers, photographers and professional publishers; knowledge workers—teams of workers who share and collaborate on high-value information; enterprise users—IT managers, Web analysts, marketing executives, line of business managers and executives; high-end consumers—digital imaging and digital video hobbyists and enthusiasts; application developers and OEMs—mobile device manufacturers, printer manufacturers, Internet service providers and developers.
We execute against this strategy by delivering products that support industry standards and can be deployed across multiple computing environments. We also leverage the broad reach of our ubiquitous client technologies including our Adobe Reader, and our Adobe Flash Platform which enables the development of products and solutions that dramatically improves how businesses and governments engage with their customers, employees and constituents. Our Adobe Flash Platform includes our broadly deployed Adobe Flash Player, and our Adobe AIR software which enables developers to build and deploy rich media and Internet applications to client devices. Together, these client technologies allow users of our products and technologies to ensure reliable, secure and rich application experiences across devices, browsers and operating systems.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES OVERVIEW
In fiscal 2009, we categorized our products and services into the following businesses: Creative Solutions, Business Productivity Solutions, Platform and Print and Publishing. We further broke our Business Productivity Solutions business into two reported segments: Knowledge Worker and Enterprise. With our acquisition of Omniture, Inc. (“Omniture”) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, we created and added a new segment called Omniture for the purpose of reporting Omniture results.
Effective in the first quarter of fiscal 2010, we modified our segment reporting. Our Creative Solutions segment, our Platform segment, our Print and Publishing segment, and our Omniture segment continue to be reported as they were in fiscal 2009. Our Business Productivity Solutions business that is reported in two segments (Knowledge Worker and Enterprise), was modified to reflect a change in how we develop, market and sell our Acrobat Connect Pro product family. Previously, Acrobat Connect Pro results were reported in our Knowledge Worker segment. In fiscal 2010, Acrobat Connect Pro results will be reported as part of our Enterprise segment.
Accordingly, our six fiscal 2010 business segments are as follows: Creative Solutions, Knowledge Worker, Enterprise, Omniture, Platform, and Print and Publishing. This overview, organized by these segments, combines an explanation of our various market opportunities with a summary of our fiscal 2009 results and a discussion of our strategies to address our market opportunities in fiscal 2010 and beyond.
Creative Solutions Segment
Creative Solutions Market Opportunity
Our Creative Solutions segment focuses primarily on the needs of the creative professional customer. Creative professionals include graphic designers, production artists, Web designers and developers, user interface designers, writers, videographers, motion graphic artists, photographers and prepress professionals. They use and rely on Adobe’s solutions for professional publishing, Web design and development, professional photography, video production, animation and motion graphic production and printing visually rich information.
Our software tools are used by creative professionals to create much of the printed and on-line information people see and read every day, including newspapers, magazines, Websites, Rich Internet Applications (“RIAs”), catalogs, advertisements, brochures, product documentation, books, memos, reports and banners. Our tools are also used to create and enhance visually rich content, including video, animation and mobile content, that is created by multimedia, film, television, audio and video producers who work in advertising, Web design, music, entertainment, corporate and marketing communications, product design, user interface design, sales training, printing, architecture and fine arts. Knowledge workers, educators, hobbyists and high end consumers are also attracted to our creative products to create and deliver content that is of creative professional quality.
Our offerings in the Creative Solutions market extend to real-time rich media solutions which give business users the control to upload, manage, enhance and publish dynamic rich content with minimal IT support. Our offerings also extend to the delivery of rich media through streaming media and a flexible development environment for creating and delivering innovative, interactive media applications. Our media products and services enable broadcasters, events organizers and marketers to reach the broadest possible audience via our rich Flash Platform.
As technology continues to change and improve, the market dynamics for these creative professionals continue to evolve. Due to the constantly changing ways in which people choose to receive information, creative professionals look to their software tools as a means to make their information impactful and to repurpose content across a variety of media, applications and systems. They desire greater efficiency from the software they use to streamline their publishing and content creation workflows and to effectively manage their assets. They also look for new and innovative ways to deliver their content and information to hand-held devices such as mobile handsets and consumer electronic devices.
Creative professional customers license upgrades and new versions of our Creative Solutions products due to the high degree of innovative new features and significant productivity gained through their use. They also frequently purchase license upgrades and new versions of these products when they buy new computers, or migrate to new or updated operating systems.
In addition, knowledge workers in enterprises, educators and students in schools and universities, and hobbyists at home license our Creative Solutions products. Knowledge workers desire professional-quality products to accomplish tasks such as creating visually-rich sales presentations, engineering or architectural proposals, real estate flyers and school year books. Educators utilize our solutions to educate future creative professionals, as well as create their course content and online eLearning-based lessons. Hobbyists use our tools to create distinctive online communications and photo albums, community newsletters, Web blogs, animations, videos and Websites for family, friends or community organizations.
With the increasing use of the Web as a means for marketing and advertising, we believe a key driver of our Creative Solutions business will also be the growing amount of Website content created by our customers to deliver impactful and compelling Web-based experiences for their constituents across multiple screens, including PCs, mobile devices, and Internet-connected living room electronics such as televisions (“TVs”). We also believe those who manage Websites will want to utilize Web analytic data and other Web usage metrics to optimize their Websites and content to improve the overall experience of their sites.
Another driver of our Creative Solutions business is the growth in the use of digital devices such as digital cameras, digital video cameras, multimedia-enabled computers, DVD players, scanners, Web-capable image and video-enabled handheld devices, cellular phones, gaming consoles and other non-PC Internet-connected devices. In addition, faster Internet broadband speeds have made the Web a viable platform for the delivery of rich media, especially digital video. In turn, the growth in the use of high definition TVs (“HD TVs”) and video is driving the need for HD-enhanced video tools to produce HD content for movies and commercial television, as well as the need to deliver or repurpose this content to be viewed on the Web across PC and non-PC based devices.
As the use of digital photography and digital videography grows, we believe creative professionals and professional photographers throughout the world will continue to require software solutions to edit, enhance and manage their digital photographs and digital videos. Increasingly, we expect these users to desire software solutions which leverage the Web as a platform to deliver the capabilities of some or all of the features they desire in desktop software. In addition, we believe creative professionals and Web developers are increasing their use of digital video streams over the Web to create more compelling Websites. We believe professional videographers are upgrading their systems to support HD video content creation, enhancement and delivery. We also believe hobbyists will use, with more frequency, digital imaging and digital video software and online hosted software services as they purchase more affordable digital cameras and digital video cameras.
Creative Solutions Business Summary
In fiscal 2009, our creative business was adversely affected by the global economic recession and the weak general macro-economic environment. This caused revenue for our Creative Suite 4 (“CS4”) family of products to be more than 20 percent weaker than revenue achieved with the prior version for a comparable period of time since release. Despite this economy-driven weakness, we maintained our focus on driving adoption of our creative products during the year—particularly with large media companies and enterprise customers. Our CS4 family of products, which first shipped in fiscal 2008, incorporate Adobe technologies used by creative professionals into six Creative Suite editions and thirteen individual creative products, providing offerings for the various creative disciplines our customers desire. These disciplines include end-user markets such as interactive design for print and Web, as well as rich media and digital video creation. After significant weakness in the first two months of the fiscal year, licensing of CS4 products remained stable through the remainder of the year despite the uncertain global economic conditions in end-user creative professional markets.
During the year, we also maintained our focus on meeting the digital imaging and video software needs of professional photographers, professional videographers, business users and hobbyists. Adobe Photoshop is an essential tool in these customers’ workflows and they rely on Adobe’s digital imaging and video editing solutions to create and enhance many of the pictures and video we see everyday in print, on television, in movies and on the Web. Despite maintaining strong market share for our professional Photoshop products during the year, revenue decreased significantly on a year-over-year basis due to the macro-economic environment.
In the dynamic media market, which includes users who require new and advanced digital video and animation technologies, we continued to focus on driving adoption of our new digital video-based technologies. We released Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 (“FMS”) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 which provides improved dynamic streaming and HTTP delivery capabilities, performance improvements and enhanced digital rights management capabilities for H.264 video and digital video recorder functionality. The launch of FMS, which is licensed either directly by our customers or licensed through our Flash Video Streaming Service via Content Delivery Network (“CDN”) partners such as Akamai and Limelight, helped to maintain the broad adoption of Flash Video (“FLV”), the video file format compatible with Adobe Flash Player as the preferred format for delivery of digital video via the Web. Because of the broad reach and ubiquity of our Flash client technologies, the growing adoption of our authoring tools and our video delivery capabilities via our Flash Player, it is estimated by the research agency comScore that more than 75% of worldwide video watched online is now in FLV format.
To further the monetization capabilities of video content owners who wish to deliver engaging experiences utilizing their video assets, we also delivered Open Source Media Framework (“OSMF”), a new framework for media player development that can be used to create and deliver custom online media players. OSMF enables developers using Flash technologies to quickly and easily add rich functionality such as advertising, user measurement and tracking, and social network integration into new custom video players that can be branded for individual content owners.
In the professional page layout market, despite the downturn in the economy and the financial pressure facing traditional print media companies, we continued to focus on gaining market share during the year with our Adobe InDesign product. Similarly, in the Web layout and Web development markets, and in the illustration market, while our revenues were adversely affected due to the economy, we focused on maintaining market share leadership with our Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Illustrator products.
Our Scene7 business, which provides businesses with an easy-to-use Web-based system to upload, manage, enhance and publish dynamic rich content, achieved year-over-year growth in fiscal 2009 based on accelerated customer adoption of our solution. During the year, we updated the capabilities of our Scene7 hosted cross media platform with new features for e-commerce and multichannel marketing companies to create improved, high-impact customer experiences. New Adobe Scene7 capabilities include more design control and enhanced workflow efficiencies with new features such as mixed media set publishing and viewing capabilities; video authoring and viewing capabilities that synchronize merchandising videos with specific call-to-action links, as well as improved integration with Adobe Creative Suite.
During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, we released version 8 of our Adobe Photoshop Elements software which is our digital imaging application targeted for amateur photographers and digital imaging hobbyists. In the same quarter, we released version 8 of Adobe Premiere Elements software which is our video editing software that can be used by hobbyists to enhance and share their digital video memories on DVDs. We also released a software bundle that includes the new versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements to target hobbyists who desire both applications in one affordable package. Despite success with these new hobbyist product releases, overall revenue in the hobbyist category declined year-over-year due to the economy.
Creative Solutions Business Strategy
In fiscal 2010, our Creative Solutions strategy will focus on driving revenue growth and increasing market share of our products through the delivery of comprehensive software solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. To help drive this strategy, we will deliver new versions of our Creative Suite family of products during the year with a focus on improved integration between our products, more efficient collaboration and workflow capabilities, and enhanced functionality – particularly in areas related to interactivity and rich media use related to Adobe Flash content creation, mobile and alternative device content creation, and hosted cloud-based services which will augment the capabilities of our desktop products. We will also utilize hardware improvements such as 64-bit computing support and graphics processor unit acceleration to significantly improve the performance of our products.
We believe that, while many of our customers have made the switch to our Creative Suite editions from individual creative products, there still remains a large opportunity to migrate customers from individual products to Creative Suite editions – particularly in emerging markets and other large geographic markets outside the United States where our Creative Suite penetration is lower. We also believe many customers who did not migrate to newer CS4 releases during 2009 due to economic factors could upgrade to new versions of our products in 2010, due to new and enhanced features, improved productivity gains, support for the latest Microsoft and Apple operating systems that are being adopted by our customers, new hardware purchases by our customers which could cause them to update old versions of creative software, and the addition of features in some of our creative products which will provide better integration with our Omniture Web analytics and business optimization products.
To increase the addressable market for our Creative Solutions business, and to address the needs of customers creating interactive content and applications for both PC and non-PC based environments, we intend to add Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flash Builder to some of our Creative Suite configurations in 2010. We believe interactive designers, Web developers and other creative professionals will benefit from the added features and integration of these Platform Business Unit products with the other creative products they regularly use to provide innovative ways to deliver improved Web-based content, applications and experiences for both PC screens and non-PC screens such as mobile device and TV screens.
We intend to continue our efforts to be the recognized market leader in the professional page layout, Web layout and illustration software markets. In page layout, we will continue to add new features to our InDesign product with a focus on cross-media publishing workflows, as well as continue to enhance its integration with other products print professionals utilize in their workflows. In Web layout, we strive to continue to redefine the Web experience by offering the most feature-rich, market-leading solutions for Website design and development with our Dreamweaver and Flash offerings. In illustration, we will continue to innovate and develop new capabilities which we believe will preserve our Illustrator product as a leading graphics creation solution.
We plan to continue to work on enhancements for our Photoshop family of product offerings to meet the evolving needs of professional photographers, creative professional customers (including graphic designers, Web designers and video producers) and imaging enthusiasts to drive upgrades and new user adoption. We also plan to add new capabilities to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, our digital photography workflow tool for professional photographers and hobbyists. In addition, we continue to believe many customers will license the Photoshop product capabilities via our Creative Suite editions as opposed to licensing individual Photoshop products.
With our set of professional digital video and motion graphic products, we strive to provide the market-leading, end-to-end digital video, motion graphic and animation platform for our customers. To grow this business, we will continue to market the advanced features, the cross-platform and cross-device capabilities, and the workflow benefits of this platform to creative professionals and videographers in the film, broadcast, corporate and event videography market segments. We are also enhancing our FMS solution to deliver the highest quality video streaming capability and we are working with partners to deliver integrated video systems and video delivery services. With broad adoption of Adobe Flash Player and its high-quality video playback features, we will continue to work on advancing our seamless video authoring-to-playback workflow capability for those wishing to provide a rich video experience on the Web and to mobile devices. We will also work to integrate analytics and optimization capabilities into our video solutions, leveraging our OSMF effort and the capabilities of our Omniture offerings.
To further our initiatives in digital video and motion graphics, we intend to extend our leadership position in Web video by continuing to support and drive the improvement of industry standards, as well as innovate and deliver advanced content creation, protection, delivery and monetization capabilities in our dynamic media streaming products, the Adobe Flash Player, our OSMF effort and our Omniture solutions. By focusing on the end-to-end video workflow needs and monetization goals of our customers, we believe we are uniquely positioned to provide the best solution for the creation and delivery of high-quality Web video content. In addition, as the number of hobbyists desiring easy-to-use video editing solutions grows, we intend to enhance the video editing and DVD creation capabilities of our Adobe Premiere Elements product for the sharing of digital video memories.
With our Scene7 solutions, we intend to market their capabilities to help customers automate the production and availability of rich media experiences, including zoom, dynamic sizing, personalization and interactive dynamic product catalogs. In addition, we believe our Scene7 solutions will help Adobe build a more robust Internet infrastructure for the delivery of software as a service (“SaaS”), allowing us to further develop the brand-name customer list for our Scene7 solutions and accelerate the online availability of Adobe technologies used by millions of creative professional and hobbyist users.
Creative Solutions Products
Adobe After Effects Professional—software used to create sophisticated animation, motion graphics and visual effects found in television broadcast, film, DVD authoring and the Web; provides 2D and 3D compositing, animation and visual effects tools, as well as advanced features such as motion tracking and stabilization, advanced keying and warping tools, more than 30 additional visual effects and additional audio effects.
Adobe Audition—a professional audio editing environment designed for demanding audio and video professionals; provides advanced audio mixing, editing and effects processing capabilities.
Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium—an integrated software solution that creative professionals can use as a platform for print, Web and mobile content publishing; combines Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop Extended technologies with file management and integration technology called Version Cue, a file management and control center called Adobe Bridge, a tool used to produce innovative and compelling content for a broad range of mobile phones and consumer electronics devices called Adobe Device Central, and Adobe Acrobat Connect Web conferencing software that enables users to instantly communicate and collaborate through easy-to-use, easy-to-access online personal meeting rooms.
Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard—an integrated software solution that creative professionals can utilize for professional design and print production, page layout, image editing, illustration and Adobe PDF workflows; combines Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop technologies, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe Acrobat Connect Web conferencing software.
Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection—an integrated software solution which provides all the tools creative professionals require to create content for every design discipline in one offering; provides capabilities for professional page layout, image editing, vector illustration, print production, Website design/development, rich interactive content creation, visual effects and motion graphics, video capture/editing/production, DVD titling and digital audio production; includes Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe After Effects Professional, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Encore, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop Extended, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Soundbooth technologies, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central, Adobe Acrobat Connect and Adobe Dynamic Link which enables intermediate rendering for a smoother workflow between video production tools.
Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium—an integrated software solution that provides creative professionals a complete post-production solution consisting of video, audio and design tools that can be utilized to create and deliver content to film, video, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, the Web and mobile devices; combines Adobe After Effects Professional, Adobe Encore, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop Extended, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Soundbooth technologies, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central, Adobe Acrobat Connect Web conferencing software and Adobe Dynamic Link.
Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium—an integrated software solution that provides creative professionals a complete solution for creating interactive Websites, applications, user interfaces, presentations, mobile device content and other digital experiences; allows users to prototype Web projects, design Website assets, build Web experiences and efficiently maintain and update Web content; combines Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop Extended technologies, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central, Adobe Acrobat Connect Web conferencing software and Adobe Dynamic Link.
Adobe Creative Suite Web Standard—an integrated software solution that provides a basic toolkit for Web designers and developers to prototype, design, develop and maintain Websites, Web applications, interactive Web experiences and mobile content; combines Adobe Contribute, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Flash Professional technologies, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe Acrobat Connect Web conferencing software.
Adobe Dreamweaver—a professional software development application used by designers and developers to create a broad range of Web solutions for publishing online commerce, customer service and online educational content; includes capabilities for visually designing HTML pages, coding HTML and application logic and working with application server technologies.
Adobe Encore—professional DVD authoring and creation software; provides a comprehensive set of design tools and integration with other Adobe software to create a streamlined DVD creation workflow; provides ability to output projects to recordable DVD formats including Blu-ray, ensuring a wide degree of playback compatibility.
Adobe Fireworks—a professional graphics design tool that allows users to rapidly prototype and design Websites and Web application interfaces while giving professional designers and developers tools for creating images that can be deployed to Web browsers, Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR; integrates with Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash and Adobe Photoshop, and supports Adobe AIR application development.
Adobe Flash Access—a scalable, flexible content protection solution that enables the distribution and monetization of premium video content delivered online; previously known as Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server.
Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server—a configuration of our streaming media capabilities to deliver secure, high-quality video on demand, video blogging and messaging, Web conferencing and live video capabilities that can be viewed via Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR; provides a flexible development environment for creating and delivering interactive media applications; utilized by many industries, including media and entertainment, telecommunications, advertising, government and education.
Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server—a lower-cost version of our streaming media capabilities that can be used to deliver live streaming and video-on-demand streaming; configured for lower volume streaming of content that is suitable for small- and medium- size streaming needs.
Adobe Flash Professional—provides an advanced development environment for creating Internet applications which integrate animations, motion graphics, sound, text and additional video functionality; solutions built with Adobe Flash Professional are deployed via the Web to browsers and to devices that run Adobe Flash Player.
Adobe Illustrator—a vector-based illustration design tool used to create compelling graphic artwork for print publications, Websites and video production.
Adobe InCopy—an editorial tool for collaboration between writers, editors and copy-fitters; Adobe InCopy is a companion to Adobe InDesign.
Adobe InDesign—a page-layout application for publishing professionals; based on an open, object-oriented architecture that enables Adobe and its industry partners to deliver powerful publishing solutions for magazine, newspaper and other publishing applications.
Adobe InDesign Server—technology for third-party systems integrators and developers to use for building design-driven, server-based publishing solutions; brings the innovative design and typography features of InDesign software to the server platform and enables Adobe partners to provide new levels of automation and efficiency in high-end editorial workflows, collateral creation, variable data publishing and Web-based design solutions.
Adobe Photoshop—provides photo design, enhancement and editing capabilities for print, the Web and multi-media; used by graphic designers, professional photographers, Web designers, professional publishers and video professionals, as well as amateur photographers and digital imaging hobbyists.
Adobe Photoshop Elements—offers powerful yet easy-to-use photo editing functionality plus intuitive organizing, printing and sharing capabilities for amateur photographers and hobbyists who want to create professional-quality images for print and the Web.
Adobe Photoshop Extended—provides the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop, plus additional tools for editing 3D and motion-based content and performing image analysis; targeted for: film, video and multimedia professionals; graphic and Web designers using 3D and motion; manufacturing professionals; medical professionals; architects and engineers; and scientific researchers.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom—software designed for professional photographers and photo hobbyists, it addresses their unique photography workflow needs by providing more efficient and powerful ways to import, select, develop and showcase large volumes of digital images.
Adobe Premiere Elements—a powerful yet easy-to-use video-editing software for home video editing; provides tools for hobbyists to quickly edit and enhance video footage with fun effects and transitions and create custom DVDs for sharing video with friends and family.
Adobe Premiere Express—video remix and video editing software licensed to media portals such as MTV.com, Photobucket and YouTube to provide consumers with embedded access to industry leading Adobe video editing and enhancement technologies.
Adobe Premiere Pro—professional digital video-editing software used to create broadcast-quality content for video, film, DVD, multimedia and streaming over the Web.
Adobe Soundbooth—an application that provides video editors, designers and others who do not specialize in audio with the tools that they need to accomplish audio-based tasks in their everyday work, such as removing noise from recordings, polishing voiceovers and customizing music to fit a video or animation production.
Adobe Story—new online collaborative script development tool currently in beta release and made available as a hosted service; can be used to begin the planning and preproduction phase of video workflows and will be integrated with other Adobe products, including future versions of the Adobe Creative Suite product family; developed to create more efficient video production workflows while reducing production costs, Adobe Story automatically turns content in scripts into relevant metadata that can be used throughout the Adobe digital video workflow.
Adobe Visual Communicator—software used to create newscast-style video presentations that can be delivered via e-mail, CD, DVD, PowerPoint or live over the Internet.
Business Catalyst—hosted software service which provides an all-in-one capability to develop, maintain, and run a Website to implement marketing campaigns and sell products online.
Flash Video Streaming Service—via CDN partners, Adobe offers hosted services for streaming on-demand video for the Adobe Flash Player runtime across high-performance networks; built with Adobe Flash Media Server, Flash Video Streaming Service provides an effective way to deliver FLV to large audiences without the overhead of setting up and maintaining streaming server hardware and network.
Open Source Media Framework (OSMF)—new framework for media player development that can be used to create and deliver custom online media players for content owners; enables developers using Flash technologies to quickly and easily add rich functionality such as advertising, user measurement and tracking, and social network integration into new custom video players that can be branded for individual content owners.
Ovation—software which allows users to enhance Microsoft PowerPoint slides into a richer visual experience to help deliver more impactful information, presentations and messages.
Photoshop.com—an online hosted service that provides customers with the ability to view, enhance and share their photos; also provides photo backup services, the ability to obtain seasonal artwork and other inspiring ideas that can be utilized to enhance the photo viewing and sharing experience.
Scene7 On-Demand—provides an easy-to-use, Web-based system to upload, manage, enhance and publish dynamic rich content; used by many leading online retail Websites to automate the production and availability of rich media experiences, including zoom, dynamic sizing, personalization and interactive dynamic product catalogs.
Business Productivity Solutions
The focus of our Business Productivity Solutions business is to provide solutions which meet the needs of enterprises and governments to improve their productivity, help automate business processes, improve collaboration and reduce time-to-market and costs. We believe there are several macro trends and specific growth drivers that are creating opportunities for our Business Productivity Solutions business:
· Paper-to-digital—eliminating paper and moving to automated forms-based workflows continue to be key challenges in the enterprise. Paper remains prevalent throughout industries and governments, and there are goals to drive down operational costs related to paper use and workflows involving paper-based documents. During the past decade, there has been considerable progress made towards moving away from paper-based workflows. However, we believe there still remains a significant opportunity to deliver solutions which focus on this opportunity.
· Collaboration—the nature of business continues to become more social and collaborative, and enterprises and governments are being forced to become more transparent. Customers and government constituents desire that their online interactions be friendly and effective. As such, we believe weaving social, real-time interaction into every customer interaction is becoming a key market opportunity, as well as a differentiation in the marketplace.
· Transforming customer interactions—as businesses increasingly move their customer service and new customer acquisition activities online, they are facing a completely different customer interaction model. We believe more than half of the transactions in our Adobe LiveCycle enterprise business during the past year relate to solutions oriented around transforming business processes such that organizations can more easily and cost-effectively acquire, service, and ultimately retain their customers/constituents.
Given these market trends and growth drivers, we categorize our opportunities and our results into two distinct businesses within our Business Productivity Solutions: Knowledge Worker and Enterprise. Both businesses utilize industry standards and leverage our client platforms that include Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
Knowledge Worker Market Opportunity
As part of our Business Productivity Solutions focus, we address the needs of the knowledge worker customer whom we define as someone working in document intensive industries, focused on creating and disseminating high-value information as part of their job on a regular basis. Knowledge workers include a wide variety of job functions—such as accountants, attorneys, architects, educators, engineers, graphic designers, insurance underwriters and stock analysts. These jobs typically require the sharing of information either as a static, published document or as a collaborative, interactive document.
Knowledge workers must create information and content from a variety of sources and software applications, and be able to exchange this information within a reliable format that ensures coworkers and constituents can reliably and securely access the information. When appropriate, this information often needs to be protected or securely managed and controlled.
Document-based collaboration among knowledge workers can occur through face-to-face meetings, via phone calls, through e-mail or through Web conferencing technologies. Knowledge workers who participate in collaborations with their colleagues may be located in offices next door to each other, or in different parts of the world. These team members may change with every project and either be part of an organization’s employee base, or be an external consultant or third-party partner.
We believe there is a significant opportunity to provide solutions which enable knowledge workers to communicate and collaborate across technical, geographical and social boundaries, both inside and outside of their companies. We believe that with such solutions, users can collaborate and efficiently manage feedback from their colleagues in both real time and on-demand, and control how, when and by whom information is accessed.
Since the early 1990s, our Acrobat family of products has provided for the reliable creation and exchange of electronic documents, regardless of platform or application source type. Users can collaborate on documents with electronic comments and tailor the security of a file in order to distribute reliable Adobe PDF documents that can be viewed, printed or interacted with utilizing the free Adobe Reader. Available in different versions which target a variety of user needs, Adobe Acrobat provides essential electronic document capabilities and services to help knowledge workers accomplish a wide range of ad hoc tasks involving digital documents ranging from simple publications to forms to mission critical engineering and architectural plans. Although Acrobat has achieved strong market adoption in document-intensive industries such as government, financial services, pharmaceutical, legal, aerospace, insurance and technical publishing, we believe there are tens of millions of users who need capabilities such as those provided by Acrobat who have not yet licensed an Acrobat- based solution.
Our Acrobat.com service provides centralized online file sharing and storage capabilities, as well as simple PDF creation, an online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation authoring capabilities, and personal Web conferencing services with Adobe ConnectNow that is based on our Acrobat Connect Pro Web conferencing solution. In addition to complementing our Acrobat desktop solutions, Acrobat.com also serves as an introductory service for knowledge workers who wish to utilize PDF-creation capabilities and the Adobe Reader, but have not yet licensed an Acrobat desktop solution.
Knowledge Worker Business Summary
In fiscal 2009, our Knowledge Worker business was adversely affected by the recession and the weak general macro-economic environment. This caused revenue for our Knowledge Worker products to be approximately 23% weaker than revenue achieved in fiscal 2008. Despite this economy-driven weakness, we maintained our focus on driving adoption of our Acrobat products during the year—particularly with enterprise and government customers.
Our Acrobat 9 family of products, which first shipped in August of 2008, offers features that allow workgroups to manage a range of essential business activities such as assembling documents from multiple sources, controlling security and access to sensitive information, enabling the creation and filling out of intelligent electronic forms and more effectively collaborating on documents and projects. In addition, the Acrobat 9 family of products allows users to unify a wide range of content into a PDF Portfolio. Users can assemble documents, drawings, e-mail, spreadsheets and rich media—including audio, video, 3D and maps — in a single, compressed PDF Portfolio. Other version 9 features and enhancements included the ability to: create interactive, on-demand presentations using Adobe Presenter software; easily share video in PDF using FLV; improved security to help protect and control access to PDF documents; permanently remove sensitive information through the use of redaction tools to black out sensitive text, illustrations, or other information; easily create and manage electronic forms; and enable anyone using the free Adobe Reader to digitally sign documents, participate in shared document reviews and save forms locally. These enhanced capabilities helped to continue the increase of our penetration of Acrobat desktop licenses in enterprises.
During the year, continued adoption of our Creative Suite products has also contributed to broader adoption of Acrobat in the creative professional market. Acrobat Pro is included in four of the six Creative Suite editions and utilization of Acrobat prepress, printing and collaboration functionality is a critical component of creative customer workflows. As such, adoption of Acrobat through the Creative Suite family of products has resulted in a material amount of Acrobat revenue being reported in our Creative Solutions Segment during the year.
We also continued to grow the usage of Acrobat.com during fiscal 2009. Since it was first introduced in 2008, more than five million users have created accounts to use Acrobat.com to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, we enhanced its capabilities with easier file sharing, improved remote access including mobile device access, and the addition of new spreadsheet and presentation authoring capabilities. We believe this compelling subscription-based service will enhance the growth capabilities of the Acrobat family of products in the coming years.
Knowledge Worker Strategy
In fiscal 2010, we plan to continue to market the benefits of our knowledge worker solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises and government institutions around the world. With our Acrobat family of products, we intend to continue to increase our seat penetration in these markets through the utilization of our corporate and volume licensing programs. We also intend to increase our focus on marketing and licensing Acrobat in targeted vertical markets such as education, financial services, telecommunications and government, as well as expanding into emerging markets.
We also plan to deliver a new version of the Acrobat family of products later in the fiscal year. This new release will provide enhanced collaboration features as well as add additional capabilities to transform how Acrobat users create and deliver more dynamic experiences within PDF files. We believe this new version will help to accelerate adoption of Acrobat in targeted markets when compared to adoption and upgrade rates we experienced during fiscal 2009, which were adversely affected by the macro-economic downturn. In addition, we intend to update the capabilities of our hosted service, Acrobat.com, to increase the value of the service to existing and new users. As the use of Acrobat.com grows, we intend to target users of the free aspects of the service with paid-for functionality that will enhance their use of the overall solution.
Knowledge Worker Products
Adobe Acrobat.com—provides centralized online file sharing and storage capabilities, as well as simple PDF creation, an online word processor called Buzzword, an online spreadsheet authoring tool called Tables, an online presentation creation tool called Presentations, and personal Web conferencing services with Adobe ConnectNow.
Adobe Acrobat Standard—creates secure, reliable and compact Adobe PDF documents from desktop authoring applications such as Microsoft Office software, graphics applications and more; supports automated collaborative workflows with a rich set of commenting tools and review tracking features; includes everything needed to create and distribute rich electronic documents that can be viewed easily within leading Web browsers or on computer desktops via the free Adobe Reader.
Adobe Acrobat Pro—in addition to all the capabilities of Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Pro delivers specialized capabilities for creative professional and engineering users, such as pre-flighting, color separation and measuring tools; also allows users to insert FLV or H.264 video for direct playback in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, create dynamic XML forms with Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES and create PDF documents that enable Adobe Reader users to digitally sign PDF documents.
Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended—in addition to all the capabilities of Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Pro Extended enables collaboration between extended teams of designers and engineers to more securely and reliably communicate, visualize and document architectural and manufacturing designs using 3D data; allows users to insert and publish 3D designs from major CAD applications in Adobe PDF documents that can easily be shared with suppliers, partners and customers using the free Adobe Reader software; Acrobat Pro Extended also: allows users to easily add audio, video and quizzes to PowerPoint slides to create rich, interactive presentations with Adobe Presenter; enables conversion of a variety of video formats to FLV for playback in PDF; and enables the creation of PDF maps through the importing geospatial files that can retain metadata and coordinates. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES, Adobe Presenter, Adobe 3D Reviewer and Adobe 3D Capture Utility for UNIX.
Adobe Document Center—a hosted service that enables businesses to secure and manage Adobe PDF documents and other common business document files such as those in Microsoft Office formats.
Create Adobe PDF Online—a Web-based subscription service that provides for the easy conversion of Microsoft Office documents and other application files to Adobe PDF for the secure and reliable sharing of rich electronic documents that can be viewed easily within leading Web browsers or on computer desktops via the free Adobe Reader.
Enterprise Market Opportunity
Enterprises are under increasing pressure to save money, offer improved customer service, adhere to regulatory requirements and leverage existing investments in core systems. As a means to address these issues, a critical component of an organization’s business processes is the need to interact with data stored in enterprise applications. As this need expands beyond the core users of those applications, adapting systems to accommodate a diverse group of users—including those within and those external to the organization – has become an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. The outcome is a proliferation of manual workarounds that result in process inefficiencies, delays and poor quality of information.
In addition, enterprises have built Web applications which enjoy the reach of the Web but often fail to deliver a user interface with the ease of use and richness that users expect. This impedes utilization of these applications and increases training costs, and reduces the overall return on investment (“ROI”) that enterprises expect. Organizations are now looking to RIAs to boost their ROI for these Web applications by combining a rich graphical application interface with the universal reach of the Web.
We believe significant opportunities exist to help enterprises address these issues by making their business processes more efficient and their Web applications more engaging. We also believe forward-thinking enterprises are actively investing in disruptive processes to engage more meaningfully with customers, and the employees and partners who serve them. Enterprises want to leverage these dynamic human interactions to create a more effective customer interaction model which accelerates acquisition and retention.
To address these opportunities, we offer a platform for enterprises and governments to build Customer Interaction Solutions (“CIS”) utilizing our Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (“ES”) solutions to securely extend the reach of information, processes and services to engage with customers and constituents. Our CIS solutions leverage our Adobe Reader and the Adobe Flash Platform which help businesses and government agencies inspire commitment in their customers and constituents by engaging them — anywhere, anytime and in any medium through our universal clients and application solutions.
Our Adobe Flash Platform enables reliable, secure and rich application experiences across browsers, desktops and devices. The platform provides developers with an RIA programming model to integrate and optimize workflows and a server software framework to simplify integration and leverage existing enterprise infrastructures. We also offer CIS services and other software components to accelerate the creation of compelling, relevant and actionable applications, either through RIAs or through intelligent electronic documents based on Adobe PDF.
To improve their collaboration and communication capabilities, we believe enterprises will increasingly utilize real-time communication to improve how they train, market, sell and support their products and solutions to their customers. For this reason, we now include our Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro product line as part of our CIS offerings. Connect Pro provides capabilities via Adobe Flash Player for live Web conferencing, as well as delivering on-demand rich presentations through an on-premise server or as a hosted service. By also offering Web conferencing services as part of our LiveCycle family of products, we believe we can extend adoption of Web conferencing to a broader potential market and grow the use of such technology with an easy-to-adopt business model.
Although our solutions address the needs of a diverse set of enterprise customers, we focus primarily on two key vertical industries: financial services and government. To a lesser extent, we also target vertical markets such as media and entertainment, manufacturing, telecommunications and healthcare. For all these customers, we offer comprehensive, scalable, secure and reliable server products and tools to develop applications tailored to their specific information and business process requirements.
Enterprise Business Summary
In fiscal 2009, revenue performance for our Enterprise products was better than Adobe’s overall business. Despite the negative macro-economic backdrop, overall LiveCycle revenue declined only slightly on a year-over-year basis. A contributing factor to the year-over-year decline in our LiveCycle revenue was our strategic decision to focus less on consulting services as a component of overall LiveCycle revenue during the year. With increased consulting support by systems integrators such as Cognizant, Deloitte and Tata Consulting, we downsized our consulting organization and the revenue aspirations associated with it as we entered fiscal 2009—and focused our revenue generation primarily on the licensing of our LiveCycle solutions.
The overall performance of our enterprise business benefitted from the release of new versions of products during the year. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, we delivered Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 (“ES2”), which enables businesses and governments to deliver personalized experiences to improve employee productivity and the overall experience of their customers and constituents.
LiveCycle ES2 is an integrated J2EE server solution that blends data capture, process management, information security, document generation and content services to help create and deliver rich and engaging applications that reduce paperwork, accelerate decision-making and help ensure regulatory compliance. It provides developers the ability to build applications that improve interactions with customers and constituents across devices and channels. Delivering significant productivity improvements to IT and line-of-business managers, LiveCycle ES2 also provides an RIA framework for building customizable RIA workspaces, mobile and desktop access to critical applications, and deployment as hosted services.
New features and enhancements to LiveCycle ES2 include expanded client and Web browser support. We believe the extended mobile and desktop access to LiveCycle ES2 will help organizations save time and costs by providing seamless end-user access to processes and services that help them complete their work faster. As part of LiveCycle ES2, we offer new capabilities such as LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile—which enables access to LiveCycle ES2 from smartphones including iPhone, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices, thereby increasing user productivity by allowing access to tasks when users are away from their desks. We also offer LiveCycle Launchpad ES2, which is an Adobe AIR application that provides easy access on the desktop to initiate LiveCycle ES services such as PDF creation.
Additional LiveCycle ES2 capabilities included expanded RIA data services. Through closer integration with the Adobe Flash Platform, LiveCycle ES2 enables Adobe Flex and LiveCycle developers to create user-centric applications that are unique to particular business needs. The new LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 capability is an RIA framework for rapidly assembling and engaging activity-centric enterprise applications, and provides knowledge workers with real-time, contextual information from multiple sources in a single, personalized view. Developers can extend existing applications by exposing their business logic and user interfaces into application tiles that can be assembled to create unified views.
In addition, we provide LiveCycle Collaboration Service, which is a new hosted service that provides developers and enterprises with a scalable solution to easily build real-time, multi-user collaboration into existing or new RIAs. LiveCycle ES2 also provides the option to deploy LiveCycle capabilities in the cloud, hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment. We believe these capabilities provide organizations with a faster deployment path and lower total cost of ownership. It also allows developers to stage multiple applications before going live in production.
To make it easy for enterprise designers and developers to automate enterprise business processes, we provide tight integration of Adobe tools and solutions such as LiveCycle ES2 Solution Accelerators—which help organizations launch project planning and prototyping, and decrease development time. New LiveCycle ES2 Solution Accelerators include human capital management, eSubmissions, correspondence management, new account enrollment and services and benefits delivery. We also provide LiveCycle Workbench ES2, which is an integrated development environment (“IDE”) that allows developers, designers, and business analysts to work together collaboratively.
These LiveCycle ES2 capabilities build upon advancements we have made with LiveCycle ES that provided common services software for functionality such as forms automation, PDF document creation, document security and process management.
In fiscal 2009, we also increased our focus on the Web conferencing market opportunity with our Acrobat Connect Pro product line, which is licensed by customers as on-premise server-based software or as a hosted service. Revenue grew by more than 20% in fiscal 2009 due to our increased focus on marketing and licensing the product, as well as overall growth in the market opportunity.
Enterprise Strategy
In fiscal 2010, we will continue to focus on offering more complete enterprise server-based solutions targeting the needs of governments and enterprises worldwide. We wish to help these customers develop and deliver self-service and assisted-service Web-based applications that blend rich user interfaces and documents with data capture, document collaboration, process management and document generation capabilities that are easy to use. We strive to provide solutions which are customer-centric and help the constituents of our customers work together on complex processes and bridge the digital and paper-based environments, and do so by providing capabilities that are accessible by anyone. We intend to provide such solutions directly through our field organization, as well as together with global and regional systems integrators we partner with that deliver comprehensive solutions to their customers.
We will continue to focus our go-to-market efforts on vertical markets such as financial services and government. We intend to continue to build out our go-to-market model to leverage sales and consulting delivery through systems integrator partners. We will also work to enhance our solutions offerings through investments in new SaaS, or on-demand, capabilities for our enterprise server product family.
With our Connect Pro product, we intend to increase awareness of our solution in markets such as government and other regulated industries. We also intend to expand our go-to-market opportunity by working with Conferencing Service Providers, and we plan to deliver capabilities which allow developers to build collaboration-enabled business processes utilizing Connect Pro functionality and services.
Enterprise Products
Collaboration
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro—a rich Web-based communication system which enables organizations to reduce the costs of travel and increase the effectiveness of online training, marketing events, sales meetings and collaborative Web conferencing solutions which are instantly accessible by customers, partners and employees using Adobe Flash Player; consists of a core Connect Events Server or hosted service, and modules that provide specific application functionality, including Connect Training and Connect Events; can be deployed with either some or all of these components together; Connect Training allows organizations to build a complete online training system with Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that include surveys, analysis, course administration and content management; Connect Events allows users to provide seminar and training sessions as well as to conduct business presentations through the Web.
Data Capture
Adobe LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES2—server-based software application which enables organizations to accurately capture user-supplied information from fill-and-print paper forms that uses proven and dynamic 2D barcode technology online and offline to automate the extraction of data from paper forms and deliver it to core systems for processing; dramatically reduces costs, errors and time compared to manual data entry and solutions based on optical character recognition; barcodes are initially set up through creation of the form with Adobe’s Designer application; after the form is printed, signed and returned by users of the form, the barcode on the form is scanned and decoded, and form data obtained from the barcode is routed to the appropriate enterprise application through Adobe’s LiveCycle server products.
Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES2—high-performance, scalable and flexible framework that streamlines the development of RIAs using Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR; abstracts the complexity required to create server push–based applications and supports a rich set of features to create real-time solutions; utilizes powerful data services and simplifies data management problems such as tracking changes, synchronization, paging and conflict resolution; deployed as a standard J2EE Web application, which enables customers to leverage their existing infrastructure.
Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES2—server-based software application that organizations can use to cost-effectively and securely extend their core business processes beyond their enterprise system; enables customers to create and deploy XML-based form templates as PDF, SWF, or HTML for use with Adobe Reader or Adobe Flash Player software, or with Web browsers; provides for the capture of data from submitted forms and the transfer of the data directly into an organization’s core business systems, thereby streamlining form-driven business processes and improving data accuracy.
Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES2—server-based software application which lets enterprises easily share interactive Adobe PDF documents with external parties without requiring recipients of the documents to purchase Acrobat software that normally would be necessary to interact with the Adobe PDF documents they receive; unlocks features on an individual Adobe PDF document by document basis so that when such a file is opened in the free Adobe Reader, users have access to tools that normally would not be available in Adobe Reader, such as reviewing and commenting functions, digital signatures to electronically sign PDF documents, embedding file attachments, enabling database and Web service capabilities, and the ability to fill in form data, submit and save electronic documents locally.
Information Assurance
Adobe LiveCycle Digital Signatures ES2—server-based software application that helps organizations automate the processing of electronic documents by providing batch-based capabilities to digitally sign and certify Adobe PDF documents, validate digital signatures and encrypt/decrypt Adobe PDF documents; safeguards information when it leaves a company’s network and integrates with existing public key infrastructures.
Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2—server-based software application that helps organizations manage information access securely with dynamic, persistent document control; allows for access control and auditing of Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, PTC Pro/ENGINEER, Dassault CATIA and Lattice XVL CAD document usage inside or outside the firewall, online or offline and across multiple document platforms; lets organizations know when a document has been viewed, printed or altered and restricts access so that only intended recipients can open, use and forward a document; allows for previously granted document permissions and access to be revoked; leverages Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader and other client plug-in software to author and view protected documents.
Document Output
Adobe LiveCycle Output ES2—server-based solution which supports on-demand document processes including the generation of documents such as correspondence, confirmations, bids, or shipping labels; provides capabilities to merge XML data from back-end systems with Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES templates to generate documents in PDF, PDF/A, PostScript, PCL, or Zebra label formats; customers can customize electronic document packages by combining newly generated PDF documents with existing files from document repositories; customers can also convert PDF documents to print or image file formats and then route them automatically to support direct server-based printing or archiving operations.
Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator ES2—server-based software which automates the creation, assembly, distribution and archival of PDF documents in combination with critical business processes; converts a wide range of native and standard file formats, and can combine newly created PDF documents with existing files or pages to assemble customized PDF packages; supports direct server-based PDF printing or can convert PDF documents to a wide variety of formats, including image formats and PDF/A.
Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES2—server-based software which extends Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator ES with support for the conversion and integration of complex 2D and 3D CAD design and engineering product data into a single PDF document that can be shared using the Adobe Reader software without requiring a CAD application or viewer.
Adobe LiveCycle Production Print ES2—server-based solution that performs high-volume jobs through efficient batch processes, generating documents such as statements, invoices, contracts, or welcome kits; merges XML, ASCII or other data types from back-end systems with Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES templates to generate documents in a broad range of print or electronic formats to support high volume production requirements; enables customers to print document packages by collecting multiple jobs over time and then grouping them to minimize mailing costs.
Process Management
Adobe LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring ES2—software that allows administrators and process participants to quickly identify bottlenecks, check progress and view other process information related to business transactions; comes in two versions: Adobe LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring (“BAM”) ES Standard, which allows for the monitoring of all LiveCycle processes with 16 out-of-the-box dashboards and, Adobe LiveCycle BAM ES Extended, which adds the ability to extend Adobe LiveCycle BAM ES to other enterprise business systems so that users can monitor business processes inside and outside the LiveCycle environment.
Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES2—server-based process management application that allows organizations to orchestrate people, systems, content and business rules into streamlined, end-to-end processes that are accessible to process participants through engaging user interfaces, online or offline; provides out-of-box dashboards to help users gain insights into business operations in real time and management tools to fix day-to-day operational problems and make long-term process improvements.
Content Services
Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2—offers a library of services that can be used with other LiveCycle solution components to create content-rich engagement applications whereby end users can share and collaborate on content development in content spaces as part of a company’s business processes; supports check-in/check-out capabilities, keeps a complete audit history of all document actions and provides a fully integrated set of content services ranging from an enterprise content repository to social collaboration tools such as enterprise forums; also includes team collaboration capabilities such as forums and discussions, and provides Microsoft Office plug-ins that enable users to interact with the process engine and content repository using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.
Adobe LiveCycle ES Connectors for ECM—solutions which enable Adobe LiveCycle customers to connect their LiveCycle applications with other industry-leading enterprise content management systems, such as EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet and IBM Content Manager.
Other Knowledge Worker and Enterprise Related Products
Adobe Central Pro Output Server—a server-based software application for document generation that allows organizations to create personalized, customer-facing documents from any data source—including legacy, line-of-business, ERP or CRM applications; merges data with an electronic document template using a powerful processing engine to dynamically generate electronic documents such as purchase orders, invoices, statements and checks for delivery via Adobe PDF, the Web, e-mail, fax or print; works with Adobe Output Designer which is a companion tool used to create sophisticated document templates.
Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES2—desktop software application which simplifies the creation and maintenance of intelligent XML based forms for deployment as Adobe PDF forms, HTML applications and Flash based RIAs; provides an intuitive, graphical design tool for creating XML templates that look exactly as the author intended and previewing them before deployment; it also simplifies adding intelligence to documents, such as business and routing logic, and binding form fields to arbitrary XML schemes for seamless integration with enterprise applications.
Adobe Output Designer—a design tool that allows users to create electronic document templates for use with Adobe solutions for document generation; aids in the creation of electronic documents that exactly replicate existing paper documents.
Adobe Output Pak for mySAP.com—a SAP-certified server-based software application for document generation that enables organizations to optimize their investment in their SAP solution by creating personalized, professional-looking, customer-facing documents; provides an easy, fast and cost-effective way to create and maintain documents for the SAP environment; integrates directly with an SAP system to extract information which is merged with a document template that defines the layout and formatting of the document; output can be in a variety of formats, including Adobe PDF, print, fax, e-mail and the Web.
Adobe Reader—software for reliable reviewing and printing of Adobe PDF documents on a variety of hardware and operating system platforms; when used with certain Adobe PDF documents created with Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions Server, Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, Adobe Reader also can be used to enable collaborative workflows through the addition of collaboration features built into the Adobe PDF file; these features include review and markup tools that normally are not present in the standard Adobe Reader product.
Adobe Web Output Pak—a server-based software application for document generation; creates documents in PDF and HTML for presentation on the Web and in Wireless Markup Language for presentation to a wireless device; allows users to personalize and control the look of documents based on the data the documents contain.
Omniture Segment
Omniture Market Opportunity
Our Omniture Business segment provides Web analytics and online business optimization products and services, which we deliver through our Omniture line of products and our Omniture Online Marketing Suite. Customers use our Omniture products and services to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives.
Customers who use our Omniture solutions include marketing professionals such as marketing managers, online marketing managers, search engine marketers, media managers, media buyers, marketing research analysts and the chief marketing officer. Customers also include Web content editors, Web analysts and Web production managers. These customers often are involved in workflows which utilize other Adobe products, such as our creative professional tools and our Adobe Flash Platform client technologies.
We believe there are several key market trends creating opportunities for our Omniture business:
· Broad commercial utilization of the Internet — The Internet has fundamentally altered the way businesses and consumers purchase and consumer goods and services. It has also redefined many business processes and has created opportunities for new online businesses, as well as for existing offline businesses seeking to capitalize on online initiatives. Because of this, businesses are investing in innovative online initiatives to increase sales, improve customer service, enhance brand awareness, decrease time-to-market for their offerings, reduce fulfillment costs and increase operational efficiency. We expect that the scope and scale of commercial Internet usage will continue to increase. The roll-out of broadband networks and mobile networks, particularly in emerging geographic markets, will contribute to the growth of Internet usage. Internet commerce should also continue to grow. Proliferation of online marketing and customer response channels—such as mobile, online video, and social networks—will continue to generate interactions that need to be measured and analyzed across channels.
· Need to measure and automate online business — In order to make informed decisions about priorities and investments in online marketing and other commercial initiatives, we believe businesses require timely and accurate measurement of customer behavior. The proliferation of Internet usage and the fact that nearly every user interaction on a Website (or other digital medium such as mobile phone applications, set-top boxes, kiosks, point of sale systems or any IP connected device) can be captured by the owner of the Website, or other digital medium, have resulted in the creation of an unprecedented amount of data about how a business’ customers interact and transact business with it. Businesses are increasingly realizing the benefit of using information gained from online and other digital customer interactions to improve functional areas, such as sales, customer service, product development, marketing, pricing, manufacturing and inventory management. The interactive and measurable nature of Internet activity also enables businesses to determine how customers arrived at their online destinations, such as Web and mobile sites, and to what extent the costs they incur to increase site traffic are generating sales.
· Opportunity to optimize online business — Measuring online behavior and automating the capture and analysis of data are important for making informed business decisions. Businesses also need to leverage data to optimize the results of their online business activities. For example, businesses have historically measured the success of their online marketing programs by simple click-through rates or conversion rates, the latter being the percentage of click-through users who make a purchase or otherwise engage in the desired customer action during the online session. However, the effectiveness of online marketing can be optimized by analyzing and acting on deeper information, such as repeat visits, transactions generated, registrations, traffic pathways (various paths of online visitor traffic flow), time spent and quality of interaction (engagement), eventual conversion (desired customer action taken in subsequent visits) or success over time (lifetime value of customer) as well as comparing the relative effectiveness of different marketing channels (attribution). Business success metrics can also vary based on the industry or vertical market – for example, media companies optimize subscriptions and online advertising revenue, whereas retailers and ecommerce companies focus on registrations and online purchases. Online businesses utilize a large and growing number of complex and diverse communication channels to market to customers, including display advertising, paid and natural search advertising, e-mail, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, podcasts, video, RIAs and comparison shopping engines, as well as traditional offline initiatives. The emergence of multi-channel marketing initiatives, which combine traditional offline marketing initiatives such as television, print, magazine, newspapers, radio and catalog with online marketing initiatives, makes the measurement and analysis of online behavior more challenging, but presents additional opportunities to optimize results. For example, businesses want to measure and understand the impact of their advertising initiatives across all these channels, not only to determine how much credit should be given to a particular channel and to understand cross-promotional effectiveness, but more importantly to optimize search spending, make adjustments in the way channels are utilized and align the amount of resources that are allocated to each of them.
For many years, Adobe has provided creative tools and ubiquitous clients via the Adobe Flash Platform to help customers create and deliver engaging content and experiences. Given the market trends described above, we believe the combination of our tools and clients with Omniture’s capabilities will help customers to more efficiently and effectively measure, analyze and optimize those experiences—creating a complete feedback loop. With this broad platform, we believe there is a unique opportunity for Adobe to deliver an end-to-end workflow that will allow customers to create, deliver, monetize, and optimize the impact and business results of their content and assets.
Omniture Business Summary
We acquired Omniture on October 23, 2009. As one of the largest businesses in the SaaS industry, our Omniture business segment processed over one trillion transactions during the period of Adobe’s fourth quarter in a hosted environment for approximately 5,000 customers around the world.
Like the rest of our business segments, Omniture revenue was adversely affected during 2009 and growth rates slowed compared to those achieved in 2008. However, in a trend that began before our acquisition of Omniture in October 2009, the Omniture business appeared to stabilize during the fourth quarter with the improvement in the general economy, as indicated by an increase in the transaction volume on our network. In addition, our customer retention rates began stabilizing and we experienced an increase in sales of additional subscription services into our existing customer base.
Omniture’s flagship product, SiteCatalyst, anchors our analytics business, and represented 56% of the Omniture revenue reported in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. This compares to revenue of 62% in the comparable year-ago period, and reflects success against our effort to provide additional types of services beyond analytics which integrate into our Online Marketing Suite. These additional services represented 32% of Omniture’s revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, and compares to 27% in the comparable year-ago period. Our Omniture professional services, including training and consulting services, comprised the remaining 12% of Omniture’s revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.
Omniture Strategy
In the coming year, we hope to build upon the momentum Omniture achieved over the past several years by enabling our customers to capture, store and analyze information generated by their Websites and other sources and to gain critical business insights into the performance and efficiency of marketing and sales initiatives and other business processes. We intend to help our customers utilize this information to automate the targeting and delivery of content and marketing offers on a Website, as well as the broader Internet, and test site design and navigational elements to optimize the user experience and revenue opportunities for our customers. We also intend to enhance our services by providing customers with real-time access to online business information, the ability to integrate that information with a broad set of other data sources, and generate flexible reports using real-time and historical data and the ability to measure, automate and optimize critical online processes.
With the acquisition of Omniture in fiscal 2009, we believe we can help customers create a complete feedback loop of creation, delivery, analysis, and optimization around their creative and enterprise workflows. We expect to add capabilities to many of our content creation and developer tools to enable improved trackability of content in such workflows.
We also believe we can accelerate the growth of our Omniture business by expanding the Omniture go-to-market strategy to include new geographies and vertical markets where Adobe has a strong presence.
Omniture Products
We offer the Omniture Online Marketing Suite, our suite of products and services used to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives, which we host and deliver to our customers on-demand and also provide as an on-premise solution for some products. Our Online Marketing Suite consists of an open business analytics platform and an integrated set of optimization applications for visitor acquisition, conversion, online analytics and multi-channel analytics. These components and services are accessed primarily by a Web browser, and are built on a scalable and flexible computing architecture. As such, these components and services reduce the need for our customers to make upfront investments in technology, implementation services or additional IT personnel, thereby increasing customers’ flexibility in allocating their IT capital investments.
The components of our Online Marketing Suite, are described in more detail below and are organized by four main components of our offering: Visitor Acquisition, Conversion, Online Analytics and Multi-channel Analytics.
Omniture Visitor Acquisition
Omniture SearchCenter—hosted software which simplifies search marketing by providing a common interface to manage search campaigns across multiple search engines, integrate campaign metrics with web analytics, and optimize across marketing programs; enables search marketing to occur in the context of a broader marketing plan such that users such as online marketers can improve brand engagement and online conversions.
Omniture Conversion
Omniture Test&Target—hosted software which provides users such as marketers the capabilities to make their online content and offers more relevant to their customers, yielding the potential for greater customer conversion; provides an intuitive interface for rapidly designing and executing tests, creating audience segments and targeting content.
Omniture Survey—hosted software which helps organizations design, create and implement online surveys to measure audience sentiment.
Omniture SiteSearch—hosted software which gives users such as marketers the ability to control and optimize the search results on their sites; enables control over the search experience with presentation and navigation features designed to help guide visitors to the most relevant information; integrated with Omniture SiteCatalyst, SiteSearch dynamically promotes the most successful products, services and content to the top of search results using analytics-derived metrics such as revenue, conversion rates and page views.
Omniture Recommendations—hosted software which enables businesses to promote products and content online; utilizes flexible data and behavioral driven algorithms, allowing customers to increase conversions on their Websites by ensuring relevant choices are automatically presented to customers, either on Websites or through email campaigns.
Omniture Merchandising—hosted software which enables retailers to implement online merchandising strategies that optimize marketing effectiveness through increased conversions and average order value; helps retailers grow their online business by improving shoppers’ ability to find and select products, as well as promoting products based on business goals and metrics.
Omniture Publish—an on-demand Web content management solution that enables business users to easily create, manage and update Web content without the need of IT or Web developers; enables content owners to easily publish and maintain content on their Websites.
Omniture Online Analytics
Omniture SiteCatalyst—hosted software which provides customers and users such as marketers the ability to capture, store and analyze information generated by their Websites and other sources and to gain real-time business insights into the performance and efficiency of marketing and sales initiatives and other business processes; built on a scalable and flexible computing architecture.
Omniture Discover—hosted software which provides users such as Web analysts and online marketers with real-time visitor information and insight; enables businesses to understand a comprehensive, multi-dimensional view of their customers through accurate and timely information such that they can make informed decisions to improve the performance of their business.
Omniture Multi-Channel Analytics
Omniture Insight—on-premise software which enables organizations to quickly analyze large volumes of rapidly evolving data in real-time; provides users with visualization capabilities to assist them with making quick business decisions that can improve overall business performance; accepts data from any source, including data warehouses and business intelligence tools.
Omniture Insight for Retail—on-premise software which provides organizations with rapid customer insights using real-time analysis of large volumes of continuously changing point-of-sale, kiosk and inventory data; helps users correlate data to online interactions for a deeper understanding of customer responses across multiple channels.
Omniture Open Business Analytics Platform
Omniture DataWarehouse—contains the information captured by Omniture SiteCatalyst, our core Omniture product offering, and other Omniture applications.
Omniture Genesis—contains application programming interfaces to integrate and augment analytics data with relevant data from Internet and enterprise applications and data from a growing number of online and offline channels to enable business optimization.
Platform Segment
Central to our long-term strategy is our Adobe Flash Platform which enables the development and delivery of applications, content and video which dramatically improve how businesses engage with their customers and constituents. The Adobe Flash Platform includes client technologies such as Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Flash Lite and Adobe AIR. It also includes developer tools and technologies such as Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Flash Builder (formerly Flex Builder), Adobe Flash Catalyst, Adobe Flash Platform Services and Adobe Flex. In addition, server technologies such as Adobe FMS and Adobe LiveCycle Data Services round out our Flash Platform offerings. Of these products and services, Flash Professional, FMS and LiveCycle Data services are managed and delivered in other Adobe business units, yet they remain core components of our Flash Platform.
Platform Market Opportunity, Business Summary and Strategy
Our Platform Business Unit focuses on the development, marketing and licensing of our Adobe Flash Platform technologies. We have achieved penetration of Adobe Flash Player on more than 98% of Web-connected PCs – making it the most widely distributed rich client software in the world. In addition, Adobe Flash Lite, which is licensed by mobile handset and consumer electronic device manufacturers, has been distributed on more than 1.2 billion devices as of the Fall of 2009.
The broad reach and rapid adoption of the newest versions of these Adobe Flash Platform technologies allows us to rapidly innovate with our desktop and enterprise server software which utilize these technologies – enabling our customers to deliver new and more engaging experiences to their constituents that leverage the latest advancements in operating systems, hardware and rich media technologies.
Our most recent major release of Adobe Flash Player for personal computers, version 10, was delivered in the fall of 2008. Within ten months of availability, more than 93% of Web-connected PCs in mature markets had this latest version installed, the fastest adoption ever for a new version of our Flash Player. Building upon the success of Flash Player 10, we released a beta version of Flash Player 10.1 in November of 2009. In concert with the availability of new versions of our Flash server products, the newest Flash Player adds improved video capabilities such as HTTP streaming, content protection, peer-to-peer support, and enhanced digital video recorder capabilities such as pause, instant replay, and slow motion.
Due to the success and frequent electronic downloads of client technologies such as Flash Player, we generate revenue through OEM relationships with companies such as Google, where we include their technologies as part of the download offerings of our client technologies. In fiscal 2009, this download revenue grew by more than 40% when compared to fiscal 2008, and represented a significant part of the overall revenue we reported in our Platform segment.
As hundreds of millions of people around the world adopt Internet-connected hand-held phones and devices as a means to communicate, collaborate and entertain, as well as consumer electronic devices such as digital cameras, game consoles, music players and electronic educational toys, we believe a significant opportunity exists to offer our Adobe Flash Platform technologies for these devices to provide for the creation and delivery of rich content, user interfaces and data services which allow users to engage with information more easily and effectively. This trend equally applies to categories such as Netbooks and Internet-connected televisions, and the explosion in adoption of such devices is creating a challenge for content owners and application developers to deliver consistent experiences across multiple devices, operating systems, Web browsers and screen sizes.
To address this opportunity, we participate in the Open Screen Project (“OSP”), which enables designer and developers to seamlessly publish content and applications across connected devices that utilize Adobe Flash and AIR as a technology foundation. Initially started in May 2008 with approximately twenty other participating companies, momentum for OSP grew significantly in fiscal 2009 as the number of member companies supporting OSP grew to approximately fifty by October of 2009. Newest OSP members include Google, RIM and Palm, who join many other hardware manufacturers, mobile and television technology providers and media companies.
Essential to the momentum of OSP was our decision to eliminate licensing fees with our Flash client technology, as well as progress towards our goal of delivering the full Flash Player that currently runs on PCs to the smartphone platform. The removal of Flash licensing fees due to OSP resulted in an expected decline in Flash Lite mobile client revenue, with revenue in fiscal 2009 decreasing by more than fifty percent when compared to revenue achieved in fiscal 2008.
To address the opportunity of explosive growth in smartphone adoption, we made significant technological progress during the year with the conversion of Flash Player to run on non-PC devices. New Flash Player improvements include improved graphics acceleration, audio/video decoding, battery optimization, improved rendering speed and reduced memory consumption. In addition, new features include developer support for multi-touch and gesture user interfaces, accelerometer support and screen orientation adjustments, and mobile text input mechanisms. Based on this progress, in October of 2009 we demonstrated initial versions of the new Flash Player running on smartphones systems using operating systems such as Google Android and Windows Mobile. We expect to deliver beta versions of this software to handset manufacturers using these operating systems as well as Palm WebOS, Nokia S60 and RIM. We further expect handset manufacturers using these platforms to begin shipping phones with Flash Player 10.1 installed on them starting in the first half of 2010.
With the delivery of Flash Player 10.1 in fiscal 2010 to OSP members, we believe nineteen of the top twenty handset manufacturers have now committed to utilizing Adobe Flash technologies for Web browsing, application creation and the delivery of rich, consistent Internet experiences on their devices. Over time, we expect this broad community to adopt Flash Player 10.1, increasing the need for Adobe’s designer and developer tools used to create content and applications, as well as broadening our Omniture and LiveCycle opportunities as Web and IT developers extend the reach of their solutions to include mobile handsets as enterprise clients.
Another major focus of our Platform business unit is to broaden the reach and capabilities of the Adobe Flash Platform through the delivery of our newest cross-platform client named Adobe AIR. Based on Flash, PDF and HTML technologies, Adobe AIR enables the creation and delivery of Web-enabled desktop applications that run outside of a Web browser. Adobe AIR-based applications extend today’s Web browser-based applications to have the power and utility of desktop applications with capabilities such as access to the local file system, alerts and notifications, and the ability to work offline and then synchronize data when the application has online access again. Developers of Adobe AIR applications are able to create persistent, branded desktop experiences which can be developed using standard Web technologies such as HTML, Ajax, Flash and PDF, as well as common audio and video formats.
Adoption of Adobe AIR has been substantial since first being made available in fiscal 2008. As of October 2009, there were more than 250 million AIR downloads, along with more than one million downloads of the AIR developer tools used to create these applications. Companies such as eBay, DirecTV, The NASDAQ Stock Market, FOX News, Salesforce.com, The New York Times, AOL, Atlantic Records and the BBC have already deployed commercial applications based on Adobe AIR.
As the adoption of our Flash Platform grows, our Platform team also focuses on the development and delivery of our developer solutions such as Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst to leverage the latest innovations adopted by Flash Player users. These solutions ensure reliable, secure and rich application experiences across the broadest range of browsers, operating systems and devices. In fiscal 2010, we expect to deliver new versions of Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst as standalone products, as well as part of our Creative Suite family of products to address the needs of designers and developers creating content and applications for both PC and non-PC environments.
We also anticipate that growth in sales of Internet-connected televisions from vendors like Samsung and Vizio will continue to increase. Participation by these partners and potentially others will extend our opportunity for Flash Player distribution from mobile devices to Internet-connected consumer electronic devices in the digital home. We expect this in turn will increase the need for designer and developer solutions – ranging from our Creative Suite family of products to previously mentioned developer tools and technologies which make up the Adobe Flash Platform.
Our ColdFusion product line also provides fast and easy ways to build and deploy powerful Internet applications. Developers can extend or integrate ColdFusion with Java or .NET applications, connect to enterprise data and applications, create and interact via Web services, or interface with SMS on mobile devices or instant messaging clients. ColdFusion can also be used for business reporting, rich-forms generation, printable document generation, full-text search and graphing and charting—enabling customers to more fully engage their constituents with better Web experiences. Although our ColdFusion business was affected by the economy in fiscal 2009, we continued to innovate and provide ColdFusion developers with enhanced capabilities to support their evolving needs.
Platform Products
Adobe AIR—desktop client software which allows developers to use existing Web development skills (e.g. HTML, Ajax, Flash and Flex) to build and deploy RIAs on the desktop and on non-PC devices.
Adobe ColdFusion—provides a server-scripting environment and a set of features used by organizations for building database-driven scalable applications that are accessible through Web browsers, Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR; built on an open Java technology architecture and can be deployed on third-party Java application servers that support the J2EE specification.
Adobe ColdFusion Builder—new development tool for building ColdFusion applications; provides a unified, customizable and extensible development environment to code applications, manage servers and deploy projects.
Adobe ColdFusion in the Cloud—new hosted service available in beta release; enables developers to build ColdFusion applications through the Amazon Web Services environment with access to the capabilities of ColdFusion as a hosted service.
Adobe Flash Catalyst—an interaction design tool for prototyping RIAs and enabling design and development workflows throughout the application development cycle.
Adobe Flash Lite—client software used in a wide range of non-PC devices including mobile phones and consumer electronic devices; provides a subset of Adobe Flash Player functionality for viewing and interacting with content designed for mobile handsets, televisions and other types of devices.
Adobe Flash Builder—an Eclipse-based IDE for developing RIAs with the Adobe Flex framework for either Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR; developers utilize Flash Builder to quickly build and deploy applications that are expressive, intuitive and rich in interactivity.
Adobe Flash Player—the most widely distributed rich client software on PCs and consumer electronic devices, Adobe Flash Player provides a runtime environment for text, graphics, animations, sound, video, application forms and two-way communications.
Adobe Flash Platform Services—new developer services that enable advertisers and content publishers to promote, measure and monetize applications across social networks, desktops and mobile devices.
Adobe Flex—a free, open source framework, compiler and debugger for developing RIAs targeting the Adobe Flash Platform; developers use Flex to compile and debug MXML and ActionScript files into the SWF format that executes in Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
Print and Publishing Segment
Our Print and Publishing business segment contains several of our products and services which address market opportunities ranging from the diverse publishing needs of technical and business publishing to our legacy type and OEM printing businesses. These opportunities and the products we offer to address them, are reviewed below in the following OEM PostScript and Print and Publishing categories.
OEM PostScript Opportunity and Strategy
Graphics professionals and professional publishers require quality, reliability and efficiency in production printing, and we believe our printing technology provides advanced functionality to meet the sophisticated requirements of this marketplace. As high-end printing systems evolve and transition to fully digital, composite workflows, we believe we are uniquely positioned to be a supplier of software and technology based on the Adobe PostScript and Adobe PDF standards for use by this industry. We generate revenue by licensing our technology to OEMs that manufacture workflow software, printers and other output devices.
In fiscal 2009, we maintained our OEM PostScript revenue through continued innovation with PostScript technologies. In 2010, we plan to continue to enhance PostScript as well as utilize PDF enhancements to maintain these formats as standards in publishing and printing work flows.
OEM PostScript Products
Adobe PostScript—a printing and imaging page description language that delivers high quality output, cross-platform compatibility and top performance for graphically-rich printing output from corporate desktop printers to high-end publishing printers; gives users the power to create and print visually rich documents with total precision; licensed to printing equipment and workflow software manufacturers for integration into their printing products.
Adobe PDF Print Engine—a new, next-generation printing platform that enables complete, end-to-end PDF-based workflows using common PDF technology to generate, preview and print PDF documents; allows PDF documents to be rendered natively throughout a workflow, providing performance benefits which include eliminating the need to flatten transparent artwork.
Print and Publishing Market Opportunity and Strategy
In addition to the market opportunities and our businesses discussed previously, we offer a variety of products and solutions which address many different and unique publishing market needs. Our Print and Publishing Business Unit focuses on these solutions which address the diverse customer needs in markets such as technical document publishing and communication, business document publishing, CD-ROM publishing, eLearning solutions, on-line help systems and typography.
In fiscal 2009, we released version 11.5 of our Adobe Director software targeted at game developers, multimedia authors, and e-learning professionals. The updated release includes new features for creating immersive gaming and multimedia applications, support for a new audio engine, HD video and advanced 3-D features.
In fiscal 2010, we will continue to support these offerings to meet the diverse needs of each product’s user base. In addition, we believe there to be an opportunity to enhance some of our offerings, particularly in the technical communication and eLearning markets, through a comprehensive offering of several of our products to provide a complete end-to-end solution.
Print and Publishing Products
Adobe Authorware—a legacy rich media authoring tool used to develop caption based eLearning on Windows and Macintosh based platforms; use of the product ranges from creating Web-based tutorials to simulations incorporating audio and video; applications developed with Adobe Authorware can be delivered on the Web, over corporate networks or on CD-ROM.
Adobe Captivate—enables users to rapidly create professional and engaging eLearning content – including software simulation, quizzes, animation and multi-media—and deliver the content in Adobe Flash and other formats; the content can be created without any programming or multi-media skills and can be published to CD/DVDs and Learning Management Systems used in training, sales, marketing and customer support applications; often used in combination with Acrobat Connect, Adobe Captivate provides a robust technology solution to bring understanding and retention to end users of rapid training and eLearning solutions.
Adobe Contribute—an easy-to-use tool to update and publish Web content, designed for non-technical business users who need to make minor changes to intranet and Internet Websites that conform to the structure, style, layout and site standards setup by a Website administrator; streamlines the Web content maintenance process and provides Website administrators with a set of simple content management functionality to manage and administer Websites; also provides bloggers with a simple tool to create and update their blogs.
Adobe Director—a tool for creating professional multimedia content that combines images, text, audio and video into presentations, interactive experiences and prototypes; for Websites, it provides users with the ability to deliver multimedia content that supports three dimensional content and animations for use in various markets, including education, games and commerce; also enables the creation of fixed-media content for CD titles and DVD titles in the entertainment, education and corporate training markets.
Adobe Font Folio OpenType Edition—contains more than 2,200 typefaces from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType format, offering a complete type solution for print, the Web, digital video or electronic documents.
Adobe FrameMaker—an application for authoring and publishing long, structured, content-rich documents including books, documentation, technical manuals and reports; provides users a way to publish their content to multiple output formats, including print, Adobe PDF, HTML, XML and Microsoft Word.
Adobe JRun—a legacy application server solution based on the J2EE specification; integrates with our development tool offerings and is used to deploy applications for functions such as online banking and customer service.
Adobe PageMaker—software used to create high-quality documents simply and reliably with robust page layout tools, templates and stock art.
Adobe RoboHelp—an easy-to-use authoring tool used by developers and technical writers to create professional help systems and documentation for desktop and Web-based applications; utilizes support for HTML, PDF import/export, team authoring capabilities, as well as JavaHelp.
Adobe Shockwave Player—a rich media player used for deploying multimedia content for use in Internet solutions including education, training, games and commerce.
Adobe Technical Communication Suite—includes Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, Adobe Captivate, Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp technologies; helps customers improve their workflows, especially technical communicators who want a single solution to meet their content creation and publishing needs.
Adobe Type Library—includes Adobe’s best-selling typefaces, plus Adobe Type Manager; makes it easy to create beautiful text for print, Web and video projects.
Adobe Type Classics for Learning—a low-cost, introductory font library designed for students and educators.
Adobe Type Manager—provides powerful, easy management of all PostScript Type 1, OpenType and TrueType fonts.
Adobe Type Sets—various collection packages of Adobe’s best-selling typefaces; makes it easy to create beautiful text for print, Web and video projects.
FreeHand MX—a professional vector graphics tool designers and illustrators use to create high quality images that can be scaled; supports developing images for print, the Web and Adobe Flash Player.