PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Global Reach
Finding New Niches
Gupta acknowledges the difficult tradeoff Adobe has had to face between protecting its intellectual
property and encouraging developers to create new applications by making its products
and pieces of its platforms more accessible to the developer community. “Piracy is an ongoing
issue,” he says. “We don’t have a web download; you can walk across the street and buy the
software for $2. Adobe looks at India in three ways: for captive software development, for selling
our products, and for getting developers to develop applications using the Adobe platform.”
Increasingly, the products for sale are tailored to verticals in key industries—manufacturing,
infrastructure, education, and entertainment.
Adobe has had a network of some 40 resellers in India. It had originally used Wipro Ltd. as its
distributor, but in 2008 signed with Redington India to expand marketing and sales for its print
and publishing software products. Redington gives Adobe a presence in 60 cities, targeting vertical
markets such as government, education, and media.
Adobe has targeted manufacturers, architects, and the engineering/construction sector in Tier 2
and 3 cities for its Acrobat 3D software. The company offers integrated packages, with engineering
and design software provider Bentley Systems and with industrial product life cycle management
software firm Parametric Technology Corp., that enable creation and sharing of secure
three-dimensional PDF files.
On the education front, Adobe announced in October 2007 two new licensing options for its
Creative Suite 3 package of 13 print, web and video design programs. The first, a K-12 School
Site License, allows installation of CS3 on up to 500 primary and secondary school computers
(both Windows and Mac OS), along with rights for home use by teachers, but it does not include
upgrades. The license comes with a DVD offering curricula in design and production. A second,
12-month Term Site License is for college and university faculty. It includes upgrades and is
linked to training and certification programs for teachers and students.
The American India Foundation has also partnered with Adobe to bring the Adobe Youth
Voices initiative—a global program that encourages young people to share ideas and comment
on their world through multimedia and digital tools—to 25 sites in Delhi and Bangalore as part
of AIF’s Digital Equalizer program. Projects are designed to build skills in digital photography,
photojournalism, animation, website development, and multimedia.
Game On
Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia brought together Adobe’s strengths in digital print, photography
and video with Macromedia’s flash technology. Adobe’s Flex open-source framework
builds content-rich web applications for any browser, desktop, or operating system. Adobe
Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a platform for designing web applications that run from a desktop
or mobile phone. These compete with offerings from Google (Gears), Yahoo! (Widgets), Mozilla
(Prism), Curl (Nitro) and others.
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