Adobe moves to subscription biz model

Adobe on Thursday launched “Creative Cloud” in India which moves away from the traditional model of buying software upfront and takes it to the cloud as a monthly subscription at almost half the price.

“Creative Cloud” is a membership-based service that provides users with unlimited access to download and install all Creative Suite desktop applications, Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Muse, Adobe Edge tools and services; game developer tools and integration with Photoshop Touch apps.

This model enables members to automatically receive updates as and when they become available in the release cycle.

It would be available for Rs 2,885 per month for its Creative Cloud for Teams (CCT) offering targeted at teams and SMB customer base. The regular pricing for CCT would be Rs 4,040 per month once the promotions end on April 30, 2013.

“We believe that after the model our units have gone up globally and we think the attractive pricing would get us customers in India too,” Adobe  Managing Director (South Asia) Umang Bedi said.

Announcing the Q4 results of the company in December, Adobe  President & Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said that the response to “Creative Cloud” exceeded their expectations, helping them grow total Creative units by over 13 per cent.

“As of the end of the year, we had 3,26,000 paid memberships and over one million free “Creative Cloud” members. As a result, in our Creative business we exited FY '12 with $153 million in annualised recurring revenue,” Narayen had said.