Up to now, customers had perpetual access by paying a single fee for
Adobe's Creative Suite. From next month, continuing access to the programs, either individually or as
a whole, will demand a monthly fee. Standalone versions will still be available but will not be upgraded. The change was announced at
Adobe's annual
Max conference, at which it
details the latest updates to its products.
At Max,
Adobe said the standalone version of its
Creative Suite, which bundles
together 16 programs, including
Photoshop,
Illustrator,
Audition,
Dreamweaver
and
Premiere, would be frozen at version 6. Bug fixes would be made available
for this version but new features and enhancements would not. Currently, the
standalone version of
Creative Suite 6 costs about £1,800 from
Adobe.
Those who want to keep up with upgrades and changes to
Creative Suite would have
to take out a subscription to
Adobe's Creative Cloud - a web-based system
through which customers can manage what they do with the different tools. In
return, customers get access to the software as well as an online storage system
and project management tools.
In the
UK, access to all programs in the
Creative Cloud costs £47 a month
provided customers agree to pay for at least a year. If customers opt to pay
month-to-month the cost is £70. Access to individual applications costs just
under £18 a month if customers sign up for a year.
The move to a subscription model is the culmination of a long experiment by
Adobe to see if customers would pay monthly for access.
Adobe said it now had
500,000 subscribers for
Creative Cloud after running a pilot programme for a
year.
 |
| The move to subscriptions marks a big change for Adobe |
Adobe is the latest in a number of large software firms that have moved to a
cloud-based or subscription model.
Microsoft has also introduced
Office 365, a
subscription version of its set of office productivity programs.
This raises questions with me because having an online based web application is fine if you have good
internet and
broadband connection. But what if you are in an area that you don't have good
internet or
broadband connection or if you are using a Wi-Fi hot-spot? I am sure that you will start to run into problems. Like it running slow or it wouldn't even open because of 'insufficient bandwith'.
The
internet is getting faster and faster and for the normal person using the web, we are able to do more online. But we are starting to find that there are more and more things that are put on the world wide web and companies are starting that they are able to take even more money from the customers by using what is called '
cloud storage'.
These companies will have more control over who and how people use their application. It will restrict the customer to be online constantly 24/7 (which is not possible because their will always be a time or place that you will get no
internet connection).
Another problem with having web applications and having everything in the 'cloud' is, what if you do not have
internet or
broadband? What would these customers do if they want to use there product?
Or is it that I am old fashioned and I need to update my thinking.
