Adobe 2011 Annual Report Download - page 30

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Microsoft has brought to market products and technologies to address many of the market needs we focus on with our
LiveCycle family of products. Microsoft offers its eForms solution called InfoPath in certain versions of Microsoft Office and has
added Office Forms Services which extends their forms to users as MS Outlook e-mail messages or to web browsers rather than
the InfoPath client. They also continue to offer their Windows Rights Management Services in their Windows Server product
which is designed to allow corporate networks to manage and enforce restrictions built into documents.
Certain Windows operating systems contain a proprietary digital rights management technology which competes with our
LiveCycle Rights Management. In addition, Microsoft's Office product includes SharePoint which competes with certain aspects
of our LiveCycle products. Microsoft has also 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 (owned by IBM),
Nuance and Ultimus.
Print and Publishing
Our Print and Publishing product line targets many markets. In technical authoring and publishing, our Adobe FrameMaker
product faces competition from large-scale electronic publishing systems, XML-based publishing companies such as PTC, as well
as lower-end desktop publishing products such as Microsoft Word. Competition is based on the quality and features of products,
the level of customization and integration with other publishing system components, the number of hard-ware platforms supported,
service and price. We believe we can successfully compete based upon the quality and features of the FrameMaker product and
our extensive application programming interface.
In desktop publishing, our Adobe PageMaker product faces competition from other software products, including Microsoft
Publisher. Competition is based on the quality and features of products, ease-of-use, printer service support and price. We believe
we have a strong product and can successfully compete with these types of applications based upon the quality and features of
the PageMaker product, its strong brand among users and its widespread adoption among printer service bureaus.
In printing technologies, we believe the principal competitive factors for OEMs in selecting a page description language
or a printing technology are product capabilities, market leadership, reliability, price, support and engineering development
assistance. We believe that our competitive advantages include our technology competency, OEM customer relationships and our
intellectual property portfolio. Adobe PostScript faces competition from Hewlett-Packard's proprietary PCL page description
language and from developers of other page description languages based on the PostScript language standard, including Global
Graphics and Zoran. In addition, Microsoft's XPS document format and Autodesk's DWG format compete with Adobe PDF and
our PostScript technologies and solutions.
In the rapid eLearning authoring market, our Adobe eLearning Suite and our Adobe Captivate product face competition
from general content development tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, screen recording tools such as Techsmith's Camtasia and
more advanced eLearning and software simulation solutions such as Firefly, Lectora and Articulate. Competition in this market
is based on speed of development and completeness of the features of products, ease-of-use and price. We believe our product can
successfully compete based upon the strength of its broad range of features, its strong brand among users and its widespread
adoption among training developers.
Our Adobe Contribute product faces competition from solutions that provide for the simple creation of blogs and “Wikis,”
as well as basic content publishing products such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft Notepad, basic HTML
editors like ezHTMLArea and ekTron, and content management solutions similar to those with which our Day Web Experience
Management solution competes. Competition in this market is based on usability, quality and features of products, the level of
customization and integration with other WEM components, the integration with web design tools, the number of hardware
platforms supported, service and price. We believe we can successfully compete based upon the usability and price of Contribute,
its strong brand among users and integration with other WEM components.
In multimedia content authoring, our Adobe Director product faces competition from a variety of multimedia content
authoring tools. Competition is based on the quality and features of products, ease-of-use and price. We believe we have a strong
product and can successfully compete based upon the quality and features of the Director product, its strong brand among users,
its widespread adoption among content developers and publishers and the widespread proliferation of the Adobe Shockwave
Player.
In technical web authoring and publishing, our Adobe RoboHelp product faces competition from large-scale web publishing
systems, XML-based web publishing companies, as well as lower-end publishing products such as Microsoft Word. Competition
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