Monday, April 18, 2005

Adobe ColdFusion?

I certainly didn't expect this one:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.

[ Adobe ]

I have no idea if this is good or bad. And I wonder what becomes of the competing products? And does this mean I won't have to choose between Adobe's Creative Suite and Macromedia's Studio MX? I could buy one suite and get Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and ColdFusion?

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Comments [9] |

Monday, April 18, 2005 6:37:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Holy shnikies! Well, in the CF world this probably means that it will eventually be really easy to modify pdf's via CF. And that's if they don't kill it.

Nate

Monday, April 18, 2005 7:02:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Modify?

CF MX 7's ability to create a PDF from HTML rocks, BTW.

Kearns

Monday, April 18, 2005 7:54:41 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

it's scary. I mean, I wouldn't mind PS replacing Macromedia's crappy gfx program (Fireworks), but it'll be different when Flash and CF (as a platform to leverage flash even more) are no longer the main focus of the company. Seems like there's a greater chance of them losing their way and becoming not-so-good products down the line.

Don't mind Nate. He's a manager and the last version of CF he's worked with is 5 :-o

Doug

Monday, April 18, 2005 12:19:33 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Macromedia's Freehand needs to die. I hope some day to see Illustrator feeding on its fly-bloated carcass.

The other thing I hope happens is that Flash becomes a designer's tool again, and not just a programmer's tool. It used to be an accessible program, now it's so Actionscript based that you have to be a code jockey to get anything meaningful out of it.

Viva la revolución!

Dari

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 6:17:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

This is just weird. It just doesn't seem like the sort of aquisition that will work...

Katie

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 6:35:36 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Really? Acquiring your next closest rival seems to be a popular way to expand. I'm sure they'll be forced to sell off some of their products (GoLive, Freehand, Fireworks) which will go to companies that can't hope to compete for a long time.

Of course the clear winner is Microsoft, they'll have one less company to worry about.

Kearns

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:56:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Sure, it may be what people do, but that doesn't mean it works, except to kill the product line.

Cisco prides itself on it's aquisitions, but seeing them from the inside... well... they're messy. And if you are serious rivals, it's hard to integrate the people together as a cohesive team. It's hard enough when you aren't really rivals. :D

So, at best, you're generally left with a product line and lose all the people who had the great ideas that made it.

Katie

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 1:16:54 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

That's been my chief concern. I think that the Adobe culture will remain intact, which is cool, but I don't see Macromedia fitting in well.

Of course only time will tell there.

Kearns

Monday, April 25, 2005 8:27:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

"Of course the clear winner is Microsoft, they'll have one less company to worry about."

They'll have the combined forces of two companies to worry about. I think it's the other way around, if anything, though I don't think Macrobe (or is it Adobromedia?) intends to be the next Microsoft.

Comments are closed.