A few months ago we were looking into upgrading to Adobe Creative Suite 6 when they rolled out the Adobe Creative Cloud. For a monthly subscription fee we'd have access to ALL of the programs in Creative Suite, which was very appealing. As we all know, design software is very expensive. Consequently, we only got what was "essential" to our core business. Since we do mostly print, the core programs we use are Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. We do work on web sites and multimedia, but since not everyone works on those projects only a few people in the office had programs like Dreamweaver, Flash, Premier, etc. The problem was that if the people without certain programs wanted to learn it on their down time, they couldn't due to lack of access. That is no longer a problem, and all of the designers here have been taking advantage of the increased access to learn new programs.
From our IT Manager's perspective, the benefits have been:
• Easy license management; Its great for managing seats (individual users) by allowing the addition of new users and revocation of users that no longer need to use the product.
• Instant/immediate access to your software suite. Always have access to the latest version of the software suite.
• Set up an automated deployment system or allow users to self-reply their software.
• Software settings, preferences and documents can be stored on the cloud and synced between multiple workstations.
While the pros have been good, there are some definite cons:
• Software is more expensive in the long run vs. paying upfront. You're basically "renting" the software (They've allowed people to buy Creative Suite 6 as a standalone, but once it becomes outdated customers will be forced to go on the subscription model). You can see their prices for the different "membership plans" here. I do think Adobe needs to offer some more flexibility for their customers, however; maybe some kind of intermediate package for people who may only need 2-3 apps. Right now it's all or just one.
• You must have internet connection in order to sign in and use your software.
• The creative cloud control panel app was unstable, failed to connect/sync and overall, just annoying.
• Adobe can decide to raise its monthly subscription price at any time and you'd be stuck without an alternative (they do have a monopoly in our industry, after all)
• There have been concerns that having a captive revenue stream will give Adobe less of an incentive to improve and innovate. Personally, I've found some of those "improvements" they've used as an excuse to release new versions of their software rather questionable over the years. Most of the time it's felt like they just moved stuff around to make it looked like things have changed but most of the time the changes aren't really that significant.
Microsoft was the first to get into the subscription-based game with their Office 365, so this pricing model isn't new, but it's still a significant move that may be a harbinger of what is to become the norm, especially with so many aspects of computing moving to the cloud.
- Stephanie Han
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