Adobe exec puffs cloud shop: Online features are so 'compelling'... What are they again?

Creative types who prefer to buy Adobe software in boxed format rather than renting it as-a-service will from this month start to miss out on bumper "compelling" features in Creative Cloud, according to a global partner exec.

The problem is, so hot are these new add-ons to the web-based suite that Stephen Snyder, veep of global channel sales worldwide was unable to name more than, er ...one of them off the top of his head.

The folk using CS6, the last version of boxed creative software suite, are still looking for the "value proposition and the features that will push them into the future" he told us. The product is now 18 months old now, the start of the "typical renewal cycle".

"As we get into that time frame that we've had it for a year and a half, there are going to be a lot of compelling features that they'll miss out on," Snyder added.

He scrambled about for a roadmap in the meeting room: "Is it still in here or did we delete it? The coolest and sexiest one... there is a feature that allows you to de-blur photographs."

There you have it people, something that amateur snappers across the country can make use of, if they're willing to fork out every month.

We must concede, though, that there are in reality hundreds of features that Adobe launches every month across the portfolio.

The decision back in May to kill off future versions of boxed software went down very badly with some customers who liked to skip a generation of the software, or pay for it all at once instead of paying up every month – something they will not be able to do under Creative Cloud.

"Yes, that is hard to do now, isn't it," Snyder told us, "When you skip versions you end up with a mixed work environment and at some point you've got to clean all that up. You can't have some of your workforce on 3, and some on 4 and some on 6.

"They don't have the same features and functionality, and its hard to connect with other outside your group."

Some one million customers have subscribed to Creative Cloud, but the total installed base for Creative software is 12.8 million. Snyder said it just "hasn't called them all yet".

There are "super traditionalists" he added, but people's buying habits were shifting when it comes to consumer software, as evidenced by iTunes, Facebook and Salesforce.com.

And his advice to channel partners? Move customers across to the cloud as quickly as possible. Snyder said partners will experience revenue compression in the early years as they shift from lumpy sale-paid-for upfront to a monthly annuity-based revenues spread out over the life of a contract.

"Faster is better. Slower is the worst thing you can do as a reseller... to slow this transition down and keep this dip longer, you really don't want to do that. Customers will start moving to that future model and [you] kind of want to move there ahead of them to move them along," he said. ®