Download What the Adobe Merger means for Coldfusion - Mid

What the Adobe buyout
means for ColdFusion
Rick Mason, SeedChoices
The deal
• Adobe to acquire Macromedia for $3.4 billion
• Adobe has 4,000 employees
• Macromedia has 1,450 employees
Here we go again
Déjà vu all over again
• They don't understand developers, and so
they won't understand ColdFusion.
• ColdFusion does not fit into their product
space, they'll have to kill it off.
• They are not as approachable and
community involved.
• Wasn’t true when Macromedia acquired
ColdFusion, will now prove different?
Meanwhile back at the ranch
• ColdFusion had the biggest quarter in almost 5
years
• “We expect it [ColdFusion] to be a growth
product well into the future"
• Quarter to quarter sales were up 45%
• Comments from Macromedia CEO, Stephen
Elop, to Wall Street
What does Ben Forta say?
• If CFMX7 were not doing well I'd be worried
(with or without acquisition announcements).
• But CFMX7 is doing very well, sales have
exceeded expectations, and customers are very
happy with the product.
• So the ColdFusion team is already working on
what comes next, planning the next release.
There is no reason for that to change.
Kevin Lynch, Macromedia architect
• ColdFusion and J2EE are "the core DNA
of our company“
• “The upcoming takeover will not change
anything for developers using those
technologies”
A few products overlap
• Dreamweaver – GoLive
• Fireworks – Photoshop
• Freehand - Illustrator
One reason for combining forces
•
•
•
•
Microsoft is targeting Flash with Avalon
Microsoft is targeting PDF with Metro
Together they have a better chance to prevail
New Adobe now too large to be acquired by MS
Wired’s Webmonkey weighs in
• You can bet that there will be total crossfunctionality once the company irons the
kinks out between all of the applications.
• Granted, that could take a year or longer,
but it's going to be an awesome party
when it happens.
Predictions I
• Macromedia user groups and bloggers will
colonize Adobe just as Allaire did Macromedia
• The cfform tag will acquire the ability to create
pdf forms enabling Adobe to sell enterprise
class PDF solutions to big business
• Dreamweaver will absorb GoLive
Predictions II
• Freehand will be open sourced by Adobe
• Flash paper will disappear from the desktop but
be reborn in the phone/pda market
• There will two versions of Studio, one for print
and the other for web developers
The future of ColdFusion?
Questions or comments?
• [email protected]