Opinion: Record quarter puts exclamation point on Adobe's Chizen era.If one were to read just general media coverage of the changing of the guard in the Adobe chief executive's office--as
Bruce Chizen suddenly exited late last year and gave way to former COO and president Shantanu Narayen--one might have thought his seven-year reign over San Jose was all about the Benjamins: Indeed, the company finished in typical Chizen style,
posting a record fourth quarter, smashing Wall Street projections for the umpteenth time since he took the tiller from original CEO John Warnock in 2000.
Investors were sad to see him go; Adobe stock dropped a couple bucks immediately after his surprise announcement, which some attribute to his growing weary of kissing the rings of financial analysts.
Or if one were to only read Rick LePage's Christmas present to Chizen, it would seem that the former top Adobe dog was going out on top, like John Elway or Jerome Bettis announcing their retirements with Super Bowl confetti raining down on them.
The truth lies somewhere between. There's no doubting that Chizen was beyond competent, defending Adobe from a hostile Quark takeover and then turning the tables on its rival with InDesign, which to many people makes QuarkXPress seem a quaint artifact of bygone days, like mainframes and SyQuest disks.
Furthermore, under Chizen's watch, PDF proliferated crazily. Somehow, Adobe managed to convince the corporate, educational, and government markets that PDF was not just the best, but the only format for electronic documents. How does one do that, when your stock in trade is graphic design software and not giant business-class systems? It was one heck of an accomplishment, and Chizen was well rewarded for it, with Adobe seeing government agencies ordain the mandatory use of PDF for electronic documents, forms, and finally, as an archiving standard. What opportune genius, stepping in and taking over that market space at a time when the Justice department was at odds with Microsoft, who's still trying to catch up.
Speaking of rewards, some reports claim Chizen isn't getting a golden parachute, and that he's even has spoken out against fat severances given outgoing chief executives. Could be true, but don't worry about his retirement savings, kids: Those who follow the SEC breadcrumbs know Chizen prospered with the upsurge in Adobe's stock value.
Some pundits might choose Chizen's leading Adobe to acquire Macromedia as a defining moment of his CEO tenure. Ten years from now, I might agree with that, but it's a mixed bag right now: Flash seems to be no different, and while more people can do Flash now because it's getting integrated into Adobe apps, there's no earth-shattering new media revolution that changes the way we look at Flash. Yet. As Adobe pushes into new spaces--like YouTube and elsewhere--that could change.
But we can't attribute all success with ex-Macromedia tools to Chizen; incoming CEO Narayen's going to have to figure out what to do with them. The first thing? Just cancel Acrobat Connect, so far a miserable implementation of the product formerly known as Breeze. Or upgrade it significantly, by first adding two-way talk instead of just soundless video which makes actual online business meetings reminiscent of actual silent Charlie Chaplin flicks.
No, by far the defining moment was Chizen standing up to Bill Gates. It doesn't matter who was wrong or right in the contretemps surrounding Microsoft's announcing it would include "save to PDF" function in Office 2007. What matters is that Adobe said "No, you're not," and Redmond backed down. No one says no to Microsoft. Even the Justice Department, which barely won a 15-round split decision, and they make the rules for gosh sakes. Wow. That was impressive. Lion-taming impressive.
But you take the good with the bad. One example: A couple years ago, Adobe announced it was expanding its outsourcing of engineering to India at the same time it would lay off thousands of U.S. employees. Oh by the way, stockholders, those moves made your wallet--and Chizen's--fatter. That doesn't make Chizen Gordon Gekko (unless you're among the thousands who lost their jobs in that purge right before Christmas 2005), but let's not be nominating him for sainthood anytime soon.
We can evaluate Chizen's legacy subjectively from many different points of view. But in the end, there's really only one meaningful fact: PDF--and the Adobe apps that make it--are stronger than ever. So is the ecosystem of third-party developers who continue to support PDF with applications and Acrobat plug-ins, with companies like Enfocus and Nuance building their own miniature software empires around it. PDFzone.com continues to thrive. PDFzone.com! Chizen did that.
So thanks, Bruce. You can't win 'em all, but you were right an awful lot of the time. Shantanu, you've got a tough act to follow.
