Adobe has announced that it will transition Creative Suite (shrink-wrap version), which includes Photoshop, toward Creative Cloud, a subscription-based service for software and updates. Creative Suite’s traditional business model “revolved around one-time product licensing.” Knowledge@ Wharton analyzes the transition and makes these following points:
- for customers, the “cloud” business model will ultimately be beneficial
- other software companies are likely to follow
- the move acknowledges “that software is rapidly transitioning toward collaboration, subscriptions and use on multiple platforms such as Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Mac OS and Microsoft’s Windows”
- both SAP and Oracle have been moving away from a one-time licensing model
