FW: Adobe CEO interview

[Alan Litchfield]

mcarr at allette.com.au wrote:
> Adobe will have a formidable job of keeping FrameMaker relevant,
> but like you, I hope they manage to.

But why? FM is only a tool for the creation of content. CS3 is also a content
creation tool, but does things with various content data types.

When I remarked about Narayen's strategy of banking the farm on Web 2.0 I was
also pointing to something that I think is a big mistake on his part. He is
banking on being able to be the market leader in content creation, which is
where there is the greatest competition. For every one of Adobe's products
there are alternatives, some of which are free (both in the sense of no charge
as well as in terms of licensing).

Web 2.0 is nothing more than a phase. It is a developmental plateau on the way
to somewhere else and for Narayen to steer the course of Adobe's future
towards it means that he is already behind the competition who are moving on
to other means of producing output from semi/unstructured data sources. Once
upon a time Adobe used to create the targets -- Postscript, PDF, type
technologies, etc. --- now they appear to have become me too's.

FM is even more relevant now than ever before with its ability to manage
semi-structured data and producing multiple forms of output from a single
source. Yet it is able to do this from within relatively simple (if somewhat
aged) interface. But, having said that, I hope Adobe are never tempted to mess
with FrameMaker's interface. It is something I am well used to and I don't
have to waste inordinate amounts of time figuring out "where did they put that
damned widget this time".

Alan