Adobe 2007 Annual Report Download - page 19

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19
Other Segment
Our Other business segment contains several of our products and services which address market opportunities ranging
from the diverse publishing needs of technical and business publishing, to our legacy type and OEM printing businesses, to
new strategic opportunities such as developer tools and OEM revenue generated with our technology platform solutions –
which includes the Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player clients, and our new Adobe AIR client. These opportunities, and
the products we offer to address them, are reviewed below in the following categories: Platform, OEM PostScript, and Print
Publishing (formerly called Print and Classic Publishing).
Platform Opportunity and Strategy
Central to our long-term strategy is our technology platform which enables the development of products and solutions
that dramatically improves how businesses engage with their customers. While our technology platform encompasses
products and technologies created across all of Adobe’ s segments, the Platform Business Unit focuses on the development
and delivery of our developer solutions such as ColdFusion and Flex Builder, and on technology platform client and
developer technologies, including Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR. These solutions ensure reliable, secure and rich
application experiences across the broadest range of browsers, operating systems and devices.
A key long-term focus to broadening the reach and viability of our technology platform is the development of a new
cross-platform client named Adobe AIR. Based on Flash, PDF and HTML technologies, Adobe AIR enables the creation of
Web-enabled desktop applications that run outside of a Web browser. Adobe AIR based applications extend today’ s Web
browser-based applications to have the power and utility of desktop applications with capabilities such as access to the local
file system, and the ability to work offline and then synchronize data when the application has online access again. Adobe
AIR developers of Adobe AIR applications are able to create persistent, branded desktop experiences which can be
developed using standard Web technologies such as HTML, AJAX, Flash and PDF, as well as common audio and video
formats.
As part of our strategy to deploy and monetize Adobe AIR, we have realigned resources to broaden our capabilities for
marketing and supporting developers. To that end, we have moved responsibility for our Flex Builder integrated
development environment (“IDE”) and our ColdFusion product line to our Platform Business Unit. Our aim is to leverage
our developer engineering, marketing and evangelism capabilities, and to implement business models which balance our
objectives of broad cross-platform client proliferation with our client monetization strategy.
Our Flex Builder IDE is used by developers to create and deploy rich browser and Adobe AIR based applications. With
the robust IDE of Flex Builder, as well as comprehensive charting tools and components, we believe it is the most efficient
means for developers to create RIAs that deploy seamlessly across all browsers and operating systems. Our legacy
ColdFusion product line provides fast and easy ways to build and deploy powerful Internet applications. Developers can
extend or integrate ColdFusion with Java or .NET applications, connect to enterprise data and applications, create and
interact via Web services, or interface with SMS on mobile devices or instant messaging clients. ColdFusion can also be used
for business reporting, rich-forms generation, printable document generation, full-text search, and graphing and charting—
enabling customers to more fully engage their constituents with better Web experiences.
In fiscal 2007, our Platform business primarily generated revenue through OEM relationships with companies such as
Google, through downloads of our client technologies such as Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader. In addition, our
ColdFusion business continued to perform well through revenue generated from its existing customer base that benefits from
a large and active developer community. This business was also enhanced based on the delivery of an updated ColdFusion
release during the year which added strong integration capabilities with Adobe Flex.
In fiscal 2008, we will continue to explore monetization opportunities for our technology platform solutions, as well as
enhance our ColdFusion product line and drive upgrades with a new release. To support our Adobe AIR initiative, we intend
to broaden our marketing efforts through developer community outreach and grassroots evangelism. We will also work
closely with partners to implement Adobe AIR client distribution relationships, and, we will assist partners and customers
who will be developing key applications that utilize Adobe AIR. We intend to continue our focus in improving integration of
our Platform technologies with our Creative Suite solutions so that products such as Dreamweaver are able to provide
development tools for Adobe AIR applications. Finally, we intend to deliver new product capabilities and Web-based