Opinion: Adobe could be pushing PDF as a standard on every platform, but instead it is bending over backwards for Microsoft. This could be masochistic loyalty, or Adobe could be thinking strategically.Editor's Note: Adobe Systems traditionally has been one of Microsoft's most important ISV partners. With Microsoft's introduction of its InfoPath electronic forms technology, as well as Redmond's pending entry into the document management space via Longhorn, Microsoft is well on its way to becoming a key competitor of Adobe's. The two have jousted before, over fonts in the mid-1990s, though Microsoft conceded that fight.
In that spirit, we bring you a guest editorial piece on the evolving relationship between Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., authored by one of our readers who keeps close tabs on the document management and open-source software spaces.
There are a number of reasons to think that Adobe is getting a little too cozy for its own good with Microsoft. But I'd argue that Adobe is smarter than that. Instead, it's simply playing "Possum Poker."
Adobe has some real chips it can hold onto in the high-stakes poker game between Redmond and "All the Rest."
And, no, I am not talking about Adobe Fonts—which contributed a declining 5 percent of Adobe's $1.6-billion revenues in 2004. Nor am I referring to the Photoshop software that recently helped Adobe's creative division achieve a whopping 66-percent growth in revenues.
Instead, Adobe's biggest potential gold mine is the free Acrobat reader, dear reader. Think of PDF as the cross-platform document container of choice. And with new on-board security, forms, XML and scripting capabilities, PDF has turned from mild-mannered milquetoast into a real multimedia powerhouse. Given that fact, one would expect Adobe to be working triple-overtime to get PDF adopted as a standard on every platform.
However, this isn't what's happening. In fact, Adobe seems to be bending over backwards to meet Microsoft's needs. In the new Acrobat 7, PDFs have one-click access to Microsoft Office and application documents ranging from Word to Visio to Project. The only non-Microsoft documents accorded that level of privilege are AutoCAD files and Macromedia Flash.
Likewise, the new PDF-attachment capability also favors Microsoft. And Acrobat Elements software is Windows only. But, most tellingly, the Adobe Readers for AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Solaris have been lagging. A new Linux version was released just last month, but versions for the operating systems of IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are stuck back at version 5.01.
If you look outside Adobe's Intelligent Documents division, the signs also are ambiguous. In the Creative group—known for Mac and Windows neutrality—the Adobe Video Collection is far from unbiased. Three of the four tools offered are Windows-only. And Adobe FrameMaker recently lost Mac OS support.
However, if you look at the investments Adobe Ventures is making, they are concentrated around data/document distribution and handling but do not appear to have any operating system or platform bias.
Adobe's LiveCycle set of Enterprise Servers that will power much of the Adobe Intelligent Document framework are generally OS-platform-neutral, typically supporting Windows 2003, Red Hat and/or SuSE Linux, AIX, HP-UX, and/or Solaris. Likewise, the application and database servers supported also tend to be platform neutral—IBM WebSphere, Jboss 3.2, Microsoft SQL Server and/or Oracle are among those that Adobe supports.
Adobe knows that Microsoft has the power to do some serious damage to its bottom line. The company admits as much in its own candid 10K assessment issued in January 2005:
"The end markets for our software products are intensely and increasingly competitive, and are significantly affected by product introductions and market activities of industry competitors. Microsoft has an electronic form tool called InfoPath included as part of its latest professional Office product that competes with certain aspects of our Intelligent Documents product line.
"Given Microsoft's market dominance, InfoPath, or any new competitive Microsoft product or technology that is bundled as part of its Office product or operating system, could harm our overall Intelligent Documents market opportunity. In addition, Microsoft is developing the next generation of its Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn. It is anticipated that Microsoft will add new electronic document capabilities to Longhorn, providing additional competition to our Intelligent Documents products and solutions."
Clearly, Adobe management has no illusions. This is why I feel Adobe is playing Possum Poker.
Adobe is not aggressively capitalizing on its strong PDF container position. The company is preferentially meeting the needs of the dominant players in each segment of the Adobe target markets and not aggressively pursuing a desktop Linux strategy which might rile strategic competitors Microsoft and Apple Computer Inc.
Meanwhile Adobe is working hard to rationalize and consolidate the new Intelligent Documents acquisitions and technologies upon which it is basing its PDF (or now, XDP) container technology. The container looks pretty solid. And the market seems to think that the overall Adobe strategy is sound and that the drop from 42-percent growth in 2003 to 22 percent in 2004 of the Intelligent Documents division (which contributes a third of Adobe's total revenues) was an anomaly.
But if I'm wrong and Adobe isn't being strategically cagey—and, instead, is simply following a long line of ISVs who've been masochistically loyal to Microsoft—then Adobe's in for some serious hurt.
Jacques Surveyer is a consultant and writer. Adobe products were used to create his site, www.thePhotoFinishes.com. You can read more of Surveyer's writings on www.theopensourcery.com.
Document Management 
