Pandemic-induced collaboration: Adobe's billion-dollar acquisition

3 years ago 284

While the acquisition focuses connected video, it rounds retired Adobe's collaboration capabilities and extends them to the last frontier of video—a mean that has been notoriously hard to collaborate within.

The pandemic ripped disconnected the Band-Aid for collaboration. Hybrid and wholly distant environments drove businesses to follow caller ways of working. Videoconferencing, virtual events, and collaboration capabilities surged. One by-product is the red-hot acquisition marketplace for these technologies. Most recently, we saw Adobe's intent to get Frame.io, a institution that makes video collaboration software.

The acquisition besides signals that Adobe is superior astir enabling collaboration successful originative workflows. In summation to concepts like creative systems and features similar originative libraries, it has been acquiring companies. Late past year, Adobe acquired selling workflow institution Workfront. Together with that acquisition, Adobe volition present person spent astir $2.8 cardinal acquiring collaboration and workflow companies successful the past year. These are the archetypal important acquisitions since its 2018 Magento and Marketo acquisitions for selling automation and e-commerce capabilities.

Why is Adobe leaning truthful hard into workflow and collaboration? Because there's a large accidental to creaseless the unsmooth edges of galore originative workflows, and it's going to beryllium essential. Seventy-five percent of CEOs said that they expect their bureau spaces to shrink successful the aboriginal due to the fact that of anyplace work. Other leaders admit that their exertion investments haven't positioned them for palmy anyplace work. Forrester's Q3 2020 US Future Of Work Survey recovered that lone 52% of US employees hold that their institution has the exertion resources to let radical to enactment from location arsenic necessary.

But the outlook for Adobe isn't each rosy. Potential challenges with its collaboration strategy include:

Competition. Figma's integer merchandise plan absorption and real-time collaboration led to meteoric maturation and a five-times maturation complaint successful its valuation. Both Figma and InVision person centered what they bash connected enabling collaboration. Then there's Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, and immoderate fig of different collaboration methods.
Potential adoption issues. Many businesses person already standardized collaboration connected different tools. Sure, it mightiness beryllium casual to power it retired for a antithetic technology, but we've recovered that's often not the problem; it's the people. Creatives and designers volition beryllium hesitant oregon outright resistant to process change.
Pricing and packaging. We perceive that Creative Cloud is already a important disbursal astatine enterprises. With further capabilities, volition the terms increase? Adobe could possibly presumption this arsenic a mode to trim lawsuit churn.

This each gets easier if Adobe is capable to weave Frame.io capabilities into different products (much similar Workfront) alternatively than a standalone product.

This station was written by Senior Analyst Nick Barber, and it primitively appeared here.

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