Soup of the Day

Adobe take Macromedia

This week Adobe finally aquired Macromedia, providers of rich internet development tools such as Dreamweaver and Flash. Recently Macromedia has been moving into the server market to provide RIA (Rich Internet Application) Servers, an area that Microsoft are also trying to corner with their .NET technology. I have recently been working with Macromedia Flex and have found developing with it a real charm.

Meanwhile, Adobe have been trying to corner the digital content market, especially with their portable document format (PDF). Microsoft are developing a rival to PDF for Windows Vista, and Macromedia have been developing Flash Paper for a number of years. It didn’t take a genious then to figure out that if Adobe aquired Macromedia, the joint forces of the two product lines would probably ensure that Adobe is the software provider for all content creators, and not Microsoft, which in my humble opinion would be a good thing.

Microsoft are a big animal and Adobe are right to re-enforce their position in the market. But the problem I have with all of this is how it has been achieved. Many of the Macromedia staff in (Western) Europe are about to find out that their jobs are gone or being moved to Eastern Europe. Also, all Macromedia products will loose the Macromedia name from their title, so from December 15th, Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver and so on, will be the order of the day. This in itself isn’t particularly bad, except for the fact that this is exactly what Adobe said they weren’t going to do.

Which leads me on to the point. Shortly after Adobe and Macromedia announced their merger, AutoDesk, producers of 3DS Max, announced they were aquiring Alias, the producers of Maya 3D software. At present AutoDesk insist that they will not touch the Alias product line, however with AutoDesk still producing 3DS Max, and intending to keep on producing it, Alias Maya’s days may now be numbered. Not a good thing IMHO.