Adobe 2009 Annual Report Download - page 28

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As discussed previously, Microsoft markets Windows and Office which include a document format called XPS which
competes with Adobe PDF. Certain Windows operating systems also contains a proprietary digital rights management
technology which competes with Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES. In addition, Microsoft’s most recent version of
Office includes an updated version of its SharePoint product which competes with certain aspects of our Adobe LiveCycle
products. Microsoft has also recently delivered technology called Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight which
offers an alternative to building RIA applications within the Microsoft .NET framework.
In the electronic forms solution market, in addition to competition from Microsoft Infopath based solutions, we face
competition from IBM through their eForms solution recently rebranded as Lotus Workplace Forms. Similarly, we face
competition for document process management solutions from workflow solution vendors such as PegaSystems, Lombardi,
Nuance and Ultimus.
We believe that our Adobe LiveCycle server product family competes favorably against these companies and formats in
terms of the combined benefits of superior functionality, cross-platform visual page fidelity/reliability, multi-platform
capability, file compression, printing and security of documents expressed using Adobe PDF. We also believe that Adobe
PDF and its integration with XML, combined with the broad distribution of Adobe Reader on all leading hardware platforms,
provide a universal multi-platform solution that is more compelling than our competitors’ offerings.
Omniture
In our Omniture segment, we compete primarily with Web analytics and business optimization vendors whose software
is provided on demand to customers, generally through a Web browser. We also compete to a limited extent with vendors
whose software is installed by customers directly on their servers. In addition, we compete at times with our customers’ or
potential customers’ internally developed applications.
Our current principal competitors include companies such as Coremetrics, Google, Microsoft, Nedstat, Yahoo! and
WebTrends that offer on-demand services. We also compete with software vendors, such as Infor (which owns Epiphany),
Nielsen/NetRatings, a part of the Nielsen Online Unit of the Nielsen Company, Unica Corporation (which acquired Sane
Solutions) and SAS Institute. In addition, we also compete with online marketing service providers, such as Microsoft
Advertising (formerly aQuantive when acquired by Microsoft), DoubleClick (owned by Google) and 24/7 Real Media
(acquired by WPP).
Our Omniture Test&Target products also compete with multivariate testing providers, such as Optimost (owned by
Autonomy), Memetrics (acquired by Accenture), Kefta (acquired by Acxiom Digital) and [x + 1]. Our Omniture SiteSearch
products compete with intra-site search vendors, such as Autonomy, Endeca Technologies, FAST Search and Transfer ASA
(acquired by Microsoft) and Google. Our Omniture Merchandising product competes with merchandising solutions
providers such as Endeca (ThanxMedia), Celebros, SLI Systems, Nextopia Software and Fredhopper. Our Omniture InSight
products compete with channel analytics providers, such as Truviso, Clickfox, Qliktech and AsterData. Our Omniture
Recommendations product competes with product recommendations providers, such as Aggregate Knowledge, Baynote,
Certona, Rich Relevance and Amadesa. Finally, our Omniture Survey product competes with survey providers such as
OpinionLab, iPerceptions and Foresee Results.
Many of the companies that offer Web analytics software offer other products or services and as a result could also
bundle their products or services, which may result in these companies effectively selling their products or services at or
below market prices.
In addition, large software, Internet and database management companies may enter the market or enhance their Web
analytics capabilities, either by developing competing services or by acquiring existing competitors or strategic partners of
ours, and compete against us effectively as a result of their significant resources and preexisting relationships with our
current and potential customers. For example, Google offers a Web analytics service free of charge, and acquired
DoubleClick, one of our strategic partners, in 2008. Also, Microsoft offers a Web analytics service free of charge, and offers
Microsoft Advertising, which is based on their 2007 acquisition of aQuantive. In addition, Yahoo! also offers a Web
analytics service based on its acquisition of IndexTools.
We believe competitive factors in our markets include the proven performance, security, scalability, flexibility and
reliability of services; the strategic relationships and integration with third-party applications; the intuitiveness and visual
appeal of services’ user interfaces; the low total cost of ownership and demonstrable cost-effective benefits to customers; the
ability of services to provide N-dimensional segmentation of information; pricing; the flexibility and adaptability of services