Adobe的云战略能否成功？

    买不起雷克萨斯的人在需要的时候往往会租一辆。Adobe也希望用这种方式吸引那种买不起Creative Suite的人。公司希望到2012年年底前拥有32.5万名付费订阅用户。据Adobe公司表示，Creative Cloud的用户群正在增长，每周都有11,000余名新订阅用户。每月Adobe还将为企业市场专门推出一个Creative Cloud的企业版本。公司表示，Creative Cloud的每用户平均收入要比软件版高出20%，而且Adobe下一步还会向云用户推出支持服务、网站托管或服务器管理等服务，因此这个数字还有望进一步增加。

    如果说Adobe新政的第一步让有些观察人士觉得有些不确定性的话，那么它的第二步，也就是向数字营销领域扩展，也许会让他们觉得安慰些。Adobe在2008年以18亿美元的价格收购了犹他州的网络分析公司Omniture。当时有些分析师对这笔交易感到不解，但纳拉延相信，客户一定会需要数据型营销的。这种营销现在已经应用到许多任务中，比如对谷歌搜索广告进行实时竞价、根据Facebook页面有针对性地投放显示广告、分析哪些博客或微博推高了访问量，或是测试不同的网站设计，看哪种设计最能刺激销量等等。

    为了实现这些功能，自从Adobe收购Omniture后，纳拉延又花了8亿美元进行了几笔收购：比如收购了Day Software公司用于网站内容管理，收购了Demdex公司用于广告定位，收购了Efficient Frontier公司用于搜索和社交媒体广告交易，收购了Auditude用于在流媒体视频中插入广告。未来几年里，很多公司将把在线营销作为一项重要工作。据高德纳公司（Gartner）指出，美国的营销预算今年将增长9%，而IT预算的增幅只有4.7%。Adobe希望借这股东风，同时出售营销服务和软件来获利。

    美国的Expedia公司已经用上了Adobe的营销产品，据说由它创立和优化的一个社交媒体活动的Facebook粉丝已经增长了750%。电影租赁公司红盒子（Redbox）也用Adobe的产品来设计移动应用，引导顾客访问它的视频网站。索斯比拍卖行（Sotheby）在使用了Adobe的营销产品后，可以通过追踪客户访问该公司的iPad目录的情况，确定客户最感兴趣的拍卖品是什么。索斯比拍卖行的全球战略营销高级副总裁艾米•托德•米德尔顿表示，过去他们只依赖Adobe的产品做网站，而现在Adobe的产品变得更加实用。

    Adobe的两大新政已经带来了一缕成功的曙光。数字营销是目前是该公司内部增长最快的部门，收入每年可增长20%。在2012年的前9个月，这个部门的收入就达到7.68亿美元。它贡献的收入几乎占全部门的四分之一。据Cowen & Co公司的分析，Adobe每年由于Creative Suite的盗版而损失10亿美元，而Creative Cloud的按月订购服务将有助于减少盗版的损失。

    In the same way people who can't afford to buy a Lexus can usually lease one, Adobe is hoping to lure those who balked at Creative Suite's price. The company expects to have signed up 325,000 paid subscribers by the end of 2012. It claims adoption is increasing, with 11,000 new subscribers signing up each week. This month Adobe began rolling out a version for the enterprise market. Overall average revenue per user is 20% higher compared with the old product. That number will rise even further, the company says, because it is much more likely to sell support services, website hosting, or server management to cloud customers.

    If that first prong in Adobe's plan vexed some observers as uncertain, the second prong -- expanding into digital marketing -- seems to be soothing them. The strategy has its roots in the2008 acquisition of Omniture, a Utah-based web analytics company, for $1.8 billion. At the time analysts scratched their heads over the deal, but Narayen believed his customers would come to demand data-driven marketing. Such marketing now embraces diverse tasks: real-time bidding on Google search ads, targeting display ads using Facebook (FB) profiles, analyzing which Tweets or blog posts drive traffic, testing different site designs to see which generate sales.

    To make those features possible, Narayen has spent $800 million on acquisitions since Omniture: Day Software for website-content management, Demdex for ad targeting, Efficient Frontier for search and social media ad exchanges, and Auditude for inserting ads inside streaming videos. Online marketing will probably be a larger priority for many companies in coming years. According to Gartner, marketing budgets will grow 9% this year, compared with 4.7% for IT. Adobe wants to benefit from that growth by selling marketing services and software simultaneously.

    Adobe's marketing products are being used by Expedia (EXPE), which created and optimized a social media campaign that boosted its Facebook followers by 750%. Movie-rental outfit Redbox used it to design mobile apps directing customers to its video kiosks. Sotheby's (BID) tracks which auction items clients are interested in the most when they peruse the company's iPad catalogues. Amy Todd Middleton, Sotheby's senior vice president of global strategic marketing, says that Adobe tools once relied on just for creating a website, for example, have become much more Useful.

    Both of Adobe's initiatives show early signs of promise. Digital marketing is the fastest-growing segment inside the company, increasing revenue 20% annually, or $768 million in the first nine months of 2012. Revenue from the unit makes up nearly a quarter of the firm's total. According to a Cowen & Co. analysis, Adobe loses $1 billion a year because of Creative Suite piracy, something its new subscription service will help curb.