Adobe’s $20 billion Figma deal may be in trouble, with EU Commission weighing whether to launch an antitrust probe.
Adobe announced in September that it had struck a deal with Figma to acquire the startup for $20 billion. Figma has been gaining in popularity, providing a web-based competitor to Adobe’s tools at a fraction of the cost. Almost immediately, the deal was met with angst and anger from users, many of whom were using the product specifically because they did not want, or could not afford, to use Adobe’s products.
According to Bloomberg, the European Commission has received a number of requests from member states to probe the deal. The number of requests evidently fell below the threshold that would normally trigger a probe, but the Commission did acknowledge that the deal could “significantly affect competition.”
The Commission will ask Adobe to notify the transaction, meaning the companies will need EU clearance to proceed.
“We look forward to working constructively with the European Commission to address its questions and bring the review to a timely close,” a Figma spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Microsoft Edge is getting a major upgrade, incorporating Adobe Acrobat PDF capabilities — with one major catch.
Microsoft Edge has a PDF viewer built in, but it is fairly basic, in terms of the features it offers. Microsoft and Adobe have announced an agreement to bring Acrobat PDF capabilities to Edge, with many of them remaining free, as Microsoft explains in a blog post:
Together, the two companies are updating the PDF experience and value users have come to expect in Microsoft Edge by powering the built-in PDF reader with the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine. This will give users a unique PDF experience that includes higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility—including better text selection and read-aloud narration. These capabilities will continue to be free of cost.
The catch, however, is that more advanced features will require a subscription:
Users who want more advanced digital document features—such as the ability to edit text and images, convert PDFs to other file formats, and combine files—can purchase an Acrobat subscription that enables access to these features anywhere, including directly inside Microsoft Edge via a browser extension. Microsoft Edge users with existing Adobe Acrobat subscriptions can use the Acrobat extension inside Edge at no extra cost.
Executives from both companies emphasized the productivity gains the collaboration will make possible.
“Bringing Adobe and Microsoft closer together is good for productivity and good for customers,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Modern Work & Business Applications at Microsoft. “Adobe’s PDF technology in Microsoft Edge means users will have fast and secure access to critical digital document capabilities.”
“PDF is essential for modern business, accelerating productivity in a world where automation and collaboration are more critical than ever,” said Ashley Still, SVP and GM, Adobe. “By bringing the global standard in PDF experience to Microsoft Edge and the billion-plus Windows users worldwide, Adobe and Microsoft are using our joint heritage and expertise in productivity to take an important step forward in making modern, secure, and connected work and life a reality.”
“What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The importance of digital in the marketplace is going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.”
Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity
It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.
What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.
Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.
We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.
Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation
If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?
We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
Adobe and Microsoft are collaborating to bring full PDF viewing and editing support to Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams is the leading corporate messaging platform. Until now, working with PDFs was a weak point, one that has been solved by close collaboration between Microsoft and Adobe. Collaboration between the two companies allows Adobe Acrobat to be the default PDF handler for Team, providing full viewing and editing support.
“The Acrobat app in Teams allows for viewing, editing, exporting, organizing, combining, converting, compressing, protecting, accessing PDFs from Teams chats, channels, OneDrive or SharePoint,” writes Tulika Gupta, Adobe Senior Product Marketing Manager, Strategic Partnerships & Integrations. “You can use Acrobat for Microsoft Teams as a Personal Tab, Bot, Tab, Message Action, or Message Extension. We had also added Single Sign-On (SSO) and introduced the personal tab — a home page for curating all your recent documents, tools, and collaboration into one view.”
The improved integration should go a long way toward streamlining workflows.
“Given Teams is where you’re already having the conversation with your colleagues, there is no longer the additional burden of providing context (say goodbye to those emails),” Gupta adds. “You can also get notified when comments are added to PDFs directly in Teams. All comments get recorded on a single version of the PDF stored in SharePoint or OneDrive (by default) as the ‘single source of the truth.’”
The integration of Acrobat and Teams demonstrates what is possible when companies work together to make their products and services interoperable.
Users are up in arms over Adobe’s plans to purchase design startup Figma, fearing the larger company will ruin the startup’s services.
Figma has taken the design world by storm, providing web-based design tools that rival more traditional options, such as Adobe’s. The company’s offerings have even become popular within Microsoft, a long-time Adobe ally.
In the wake of Adobe’s announcement that it is purchasing Figma for $20 billion, users are already worried the deal spells the end of what made Figma special.
“Figma was a tool that gave designers superpowers. And part of the reason they did that is because they listened to what the community was asking them for,” Adam Glynn-Finnegan, a product-design lead at Netflix, told Business Insider. “I don’t think Adobe necessarily has that muscle.”
Adobe has a long history of raising prices and charging near-exorbitant prices for its design software. This has helped contribute to the rise of open source options, as well as startups like Figma that offer comparable services at prices people can afford. Many are now concerned Adobe will take the startup’s services and raise the prices to be more inline with the rest of the larger company’s offerings.
Adobe and Figma have tried to reassure users, saying the latter will remain an independent unit within Adobe. What’s more, Figma’s CEO, Dylan Field, will continue to run the unit and has said they “currently have no plan to change Figma’s pricing.”
The reassurances are not resonating with users, especially freelancers and startups that can’t afford Adobe’s software.
“Saying that people are freaking out too much comes from a place of privilege,” Mia Eltiste, a design researcher at the IBM spinoff Kyndryl, told Insider. “They can afford the subscription-based model, unlike freelancers or smaller companies, where income comes sporadically.”
Only time will tell if designers’ fears are warranted, although Adobe’s history would suggest they are. There’s also the possibility that regulators will block the deal, especially given Adobe’s dominant position within the industry.
Adobe announced it is buying digital design startup Figma for $20 billion, resulting in a significant consolidation in the industry.
Figma is a web-based digital design platform that competes with Adobe. In late August, CNBC broke the news that Figma’s popularity among Microsoft employees was testing the longtime relationship between Adobe and the Redmond-based giant.
It appears Adobe has come up with the ultimate solution to that problem, while also eliminating any other competition from Figma: buy the company. The deal is worth approximately $20 billion, half cash and half stock.
“Figma has built a phenomenal product design platform on the web,” said David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s Digital Media business. “We look forward to partnering with their incredible team and vibrant community to accelerate our joint mission to reimagine the future of creativity and productivity.”
“With Adobe’s amazing innovation and expertise, especially in 3D, video, vector, imaging and fonts, we can further reimagine end-to-end product design in the browser, while building new tools and spaces to empower customers to design products faster and more easily,” said Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO, Figma.
Adobe expects the deal to close in 2023, subject to standard regulatory approval. It remains to be seen if the deal will receive approval, with lawmakers in multiple jurisdictions cracking down on tech giants buying out smaller competitors.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had some good news for the e-commerce sector, saying that dropping prices in some categories should help fuel strong shopping.
Government and business leaders the world over are worried about the state of the economy. Rising inflation, supply chain issues, unfilled jobs, the war in Ukraine, and other factors threaten an economic downturn. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon likened it to a hurricane, although it’s still unclear how bad a hurricane it will be. Despite the cause for trepidation, Narayen believes the e-commerce sector has some reason to be optimistic.
“When you look at the total expense, in addition to the macroeconomic, where there may be a little bit more concern, what’s happening is actually you’re seeing some price decreases in elements like electronics or things that are happening with games,” Narayen said in an interview on Mad Money.
As a result of the decreased prices, especially in categories that have previously been hit hard by supply chain issues, Narayen believes digital shopping will continue at a healthy pace.
“Nothing’s going to change as it relates to people saying, ‘I want to do digital engagement, I want to perhaps buy digitally, pick up physically and you know, the multi-channel thing,” he added.
Narayen’s comments are some of the few elements of good news amid the economic uncertainty.
“We’re forecasting that ecommerce spending this year will be somewhere between $850 billion and $930 billion,” says John Copeland, Vice President of Marketing Science and Customer Insights at Adobe. This would be a 14 percent increase over last year. That would be more typical of what we see year over year in the ecommerce channel.”
John Copeland of Adobe, predicts that ecommerce spending could be $930 billion, or just under $1 trillion, in 2021:
COVID was a catalyst to the ecommerce channel last year. What we saw when you look at the full calendar year of 2020 was $813 billion dollars in ecommerce spending, 42 percent growth over 2019. That’s like combining two years’ worth of growth into a single year. Consumers have really embraced the online channel to meet their needs during these challenging times.
We’re all kind of wondering what (the vaccine rollout) is going to do in terms of ecommerce. We’re forecasting this year somewhere between $850 billion, only a 5 percent over last year, and up to $930 billion, which would be a 14 percent increase over last year. The 5 percent increase would be if everybody gets vaccinated and rushes out and we see kind of a slowdown. The $930 billion, 14 percent increase, would be more typical of what we see year over year in the ecommerce channel.
Buy Now Pay Later Up 215 Percent Over Last Year
Buy Now Pay Later is very much good for retailers. In fact, what we’ve seen in February this year relative to February 2020, which is kind of on the cusp of the pandemic, is a 215 percent increase year over year in buy now pay later orders. In terms of retailers, it comes along with larger average order values. What we’re seeing is 18 percent larger orders when customers are using that service. Unlike layaway, with buy now pay later you actually get the goods upfront, you don’t have to wait until the payment’s done.
Another trend is Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store, also known as BOPUS. In February of this year, we’re already seeing it growing 67 percent year on year. It’s always been huge and growing during the holiday season but now people are clearly working it in as part of their fulfillment options. Picking up in the store gives consumers the ability to schedule it according to their availability and knowing that stock will be there for them when they want to pick it up.
Ecommerce Nearing $1 Trillion, Says John Copeland of Adobe
In a shocking display of negligence and incompetence, Walgreens left COVID testing data exposed and refused to fix the issue when notified.
Walgreens quickly emerged as one of the most popular places for individuals to get tested for COVID-19, even touting itself as “a vital partner in testing and community education.” Individuals could register online, take the test through the company’s drive-thru and receive the results via email.
Unfortunately, according to Recode, Walgreens left the data on the open web, where virtually anyone could gain access to it. The data included name, address, email address, gender, date of birth and phone number of those who were tested. In some cases, it was even possible to access test results.
According to Recode, Alejandro Ruiz, a consultant with Interstitial Technology PBC, found the security issues in March. Ruiz informed Walgreens of the issues, using multiple channels, but the company was not responsive.
To make matters worse, security experts told Recode the issues were so basic that any company with as large a web presence as Walgreens should have known how to avoid them. Ruiz believes it’s further evidence of Walgreens’ lack of concern.
“Any company that made such basic errors in an app that handles health care data is one that does not take security seriously,” Ruiz said.
Recode contacted Walgreens directly and gave them time to fix the vulnerabilities before publication. Shockingly, Walgreens refused to do so.
“We regularly review and incorporate additional security enhancements when deemed either necessary or appropriate,” the company told Recode.
As if the lack of security was not worrying enough, researchers found a number of ad trackers attached to the company’s testing confirmation webpages, including from Adobe, Akami, Dotomi, Facebook, Google, InMoment and Monetate, in addition to data-sharing partners.
“Just the sheer number of third-party trackers attached to the appointment system is a problem, before you consider the sloppy setup,” Sean O’Brien, founder of Yale’s Privacy Lab, told Recode.
The other security experts were even more damning in their evaluation of the situation.
“This is a clear-cut example [of this type of vulnerability], but with Covid data and tons of personally identifiable information,” said Zach Edwards, privacy researcher and founder of the analytics firm Victory Medium. “I’m shocked they are refuting this clear breach.”
“It’s just another example of a large company that prioritizes its profits over our privacy,” Ruiz said.
Adobe has announced it is acquiring Frame.io, a company specializing in cloud-based video collaboration.
Video services have exploded in popularity, in large part as a result of pandemic-driven lockdowns. Video editing, however, is still a challenging a product of past years, and has not benefited from cloud-based collaboration as much as other industries.
Frame.io has been working to change that, with a cloud-based collaborative platform for video editing. Adobe sees potential paring Frame.io’s platform with its own Premiere Pro and After Effects software.
“We’ve entered a new era of connected creativity that is deeply collaborative, and we imagine a world where everyone can participate in the creative process,” said Scott Belsky, Adobe Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. “With this acquisition, we’re welcoming an incredible customer-oriented team and adding Frame.io’s cloud-native workflow capabilities to make the creative process more collaborative, productive, and efficient to further unleash creativity for all.”
Adobe has released the first version of Photoshop for Apple’s new M1 Macs, and the performance gains are impressive.
Adobe Photoshop is one of the premier applications that has been on the Mac platform for decades. Many Mac professionals have been waiting for Photoshop to make its appearance on the new M1 machines before making the jump.
The wait is finally over, with Adobe releasing the first version of an M1-compatible Photoshop. Adobe’s Pam Clark announced the news in a company blog post:
Starting today, Photoshop runs natively on Macs powered by the M1 chip and takes advantage of the performance improvements built into this new architecture. Our internal tests show a wide range of features running an average of 1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems. Our tests covered a broad scope of activities, including opening and saving files, running filters, and compute-heavy operations like Content-Aware Fill and Select Subject, which all feel noticeably faster. Our early benchmarking also shows that some operations are substantially faster with the new chip.
The performance boost is sure to be a big draw for graphics pros. The M1, based on the same processor used in the iPhone and iPad, has been winning rave reviews for its performance. Photoshop’s gains running on the new processor are sure to help drive additional Mac sales.
Adobe is bringing Super Resolution to Photoshop, using artificial intelligence to increase an image’s pixels by four times.
Everyone has seen a TV show where the character says those two infamous words: “Zoom in.” As anyone who’s actually worked with digital photos can attest, any photo magnifying is limited by the size and quality of the image. If a picture doesn’t have the necessary pixel density, it can only be enlarged so much before it becomes pixilated and loses its clarity.
Beyond being an inaccurate staple of virtually every police procedural, there are a number of practical situations where this can be a limitation. Printing a photo taken with a low-resolution camera is a perfect example, as it takes a higher resolution photo to look good when printed.
“Super Resolution is also a pixels project, but of a different kind,” writes Adobe’s Eric Chan. “Imagine turning a 10-megapixel photo into a 40-megapixel photo. Imagine upsizing an old photo taken with a low-res camera for a large print. Imagine having an advanced ‘digital zoom’ feature to enlarge your subject. There’s more goodness to imagine, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To understand Super Resolution properly, we must first talk about Enhance Details.”
Super Resolution uses AI to intelligently expand a photo, keeping it crisp with minimal artifacts.
“The term ‘Super Resolution’ refers to the process of improving the quality of a photo by boosting its apparent resolution,” continues Chan. “Enlarging a photo often produces blurry details, but Super Resolution has an ace up its sleeve — an advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos. Backed by this vast training set, Super Resolution can intelligently enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details.”
Super Resolution is now available in Camera Raw 13.2 and will soon be included in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.
Salesforce announced its much-anticipated acquisition of Slack earlier today, sparking nothing short of a battle over the cloud.
Salesforce made headlines last week when news broke that it was looking to acquire Slack. Talks progressed rapidly, with the deal announced a few hours ago. In the statement announcing the deal, Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s CEO and Co-Founder, provided a clue about what’s at stake:
Salesforce started the cloud revolution, and two decades later, we are still tapping into all the possibilities it offers to transform the way we work. The opportunity we see together is massive.
Despite being responsible for starting the cloud revolution, Salesforce has come under increasing pressure from other companies, most notably Microsoft. The Redmond company has made no bones about its intention to unseat Salesforce as the dominant CRM company. Most recently, Microsoft partnered with C3.ai and Adobe to roll out an AI-based CRM.
Similarly, Slack has been under increased pressure from Microsoft Teams. Teams doubled Slacks installed user base in November 2019 when it reached 20 million daily users. Its user base has exploded since then, reaching 115 million in October. Much of Teams’ growth has been the result of Microsoft’s bundling it with Office, a practice that prompted Slack to file an antitrust complaint with the EU.
Butterfield’s comment about “the opportunity we see together is massive” is indicative of just how much both companies need this merger. Since its IPO, Slack has never turned a profit. To make matters worse, Slack has not experienced the same pandemic-fueled boon like Zoom and other cloud platforms. It’s experienced significant growth to be sure, but not to the same degree as competing companies.
The combination of the two companies will help both fight Microsoft.
“The core reason for this deal in our opinion is to keep pace with the cloud behemoth in Redmond,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors Tuesday, reports CNN. “Slack despite facing stiff competition from Microsoft has been a clearly successful solution set further penetrating enterprises and thus looks like the natural fit for Salesforce to beef up its collaboration and messaging footprint and keep pace with [Microsoft].”
It remains to be seen if the two companies will be more effective together, but it’s a good start. The combination of the two platforms helps both provide a more complete offering to its customers.
Salesforce and Slack are expected to announce a sales agreement Tuesday, in what would be Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date.
The two companies made headlines Wednesday with news that Salesforce was looking to purchase the iconic corporate messaging app. At the time, talks were thought to still be in the preliminary stages, with no indication a deal was in sight. Within hours, however, outlets starting reporting the talks were in the advanced stages.
Things have progressed quickly, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal says a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday after market close. CNBC’s David Faber reports the deal will be roughly half cash and half stock, although it may be slightly weighted toward the cash side.
Similarly, while initial reports valued Slack at $17 billion, it appears Salesforce will be paying a significant premium. Faber said the deal is not expected to reach $30 billion, but may come close.
Experts believe the acquisition will help Slack, as well as Salesforce, fend off Microsoft. Slack has been hurt by a number of factors, most significantly Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with Office. Microsoft’s tactics prompted Slack to file an antitrust claim with the EU, a claim Jim Cramer calls “strong.”
At the same time, Microsoft continues to go after Salesforce’s core CRM market. Its most recent inroad was a partnership with C3.ai and Adobe to create AI-driven CRM.
The combination of the two companies may ultimately help both compete with Microsoft more effectively.
Salesforce may be looking to make its largest acquisition to date, possibly snapping up Slack, the popular corporate message platform.
Slack helped define the corporate messaging market and is used by organizations of all sizes. Recently, the company has faced increasing competition from Microsoft Teams, which has eclipsed Slack’s user base.
Nonetheless, Slack is still wildly popular and continues to strike deals with major companies. In February, IBM announced it was deploying Slack to all 350,000 of its employees. Similarly, in June AWS announced it was deploying Slack to all of its employees. In return, Slack migrated its voice and video calling services to Amazon’s Chime platform.
The AWS deal also spurred talk that Amazon might be interested in acquiring Slack. Despite Microsoft Teams’ larger market share, Slack is seen as the safe choice for companies that compete with Microsoft and don’t want to rely on a rival for their corporate communication. Given that AWS and Microsoft are the first and second-largest cloud providers, Slack seemed like a natural choice for AWS.
It appears Salesforce may be interested in purchasing the message platform, however, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The talks appear to be preliminary, and therefore may ultimately come to nothing. Should the a deal be struck, however, it would be the largest in Salesforce history, since Slack is currently valued at $17 billion.
Salesforce and Slack already integrate with each other. Given that both companies are locked in heated competition with Microsoft, joining forces may make sense. Salesforce, in particular, has been under increased pressure lately, with some analysts believing Microsoft’s open approach to data gives it a significant advantage over Salesforce. Microsoft has also partnered with C3.ai and Adobe to target Salesforce’s core CRM business.
It remains to be seen if the talks will bear fruit, but it is also possible Saleforce’s interest could spark renewed interest from other parties, such as AWS. Larger companies content to partner with an independent Slack may not want to see it come under the control of a possible competitor. This, in turn, may motivate them to make a move of their own.
On the heels of news it had joined forced with Microsoft and Adobe to challenge Salesforce, C3.ai has announced its intention to file an IPO.
C3.ai is an enterprise AI firm founded by CRM legend Tom Siebel. In late-October, C3.ai announced it had joined forces with Microsoft and Adobe to challenge Salesforce’s grip on the customer relationship management (CRM) market. The new product, C3 AI CRM, is built on Microsoft Dynamics and integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud, all the while using C3.ai to put AI first.
The company is now filing for an IPO. The stock will trade under the ticker symbol “AI,” and will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The number of shares and price range have yet to be determined. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and BofA Securities will act as lead book-running managers.
“Assessing the IT landscape at the beginning of the 21st century, it became apparent that a new set of technologies was destined to constitute another step function that would change everything about the information processing world, dramatically accelerating the growth of IT markets,” wrote Siebel in the filing. “This step function of technologies – substantially more impactful than anything we had seen before – included: elastic cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, and AI or predictive analytics. Today, at the confluence of these technology vectors we find the phenomenon of Enterprise AI and Digital Transformation, mandates that are rising to the top of every CEO’s agenda. The global IT market exceeds $2.3 trillion today.”
Siebel was bullish on the company’s target market, as well as his company’s prospects within it.
“We serve a large and rapidly growing market, estimated to be $174 billion in 2020, growing to $271 billion in 2024,” he continued. “Our goal is to establish a global market-leading position in this market as we did at Oracle and at Siebel Systems. The difference being that this market is an order of magnitude larger than either of those opportunities.”
The latest Windows 10 update puts the nail in Adobe Flash Player’s coffin, permanently removing the software.
Adobe Flash was one of the internet’s early means of creating and viewing multimedia. While innovative at the time, the software had a long history of being plagued with security issues—many of which were severe vulnerabilities that compromised computer systems.
As the issues continued, the tide began to turn against Flash, with Apple deciding in 2010 to stop including the software on all new Macs. Eventually Adobe decided to end-of-life the software, making the announcement in 2017, throwing its weight behind standards such as HTML5.
Although the software is not officially dead until December 21, 2020, Microsoft is preemptively killing it on Windows 10, according to a new support note.
This update removes Adobe Flash Player that is installed on any of the Windows operating systems that are listed in the “Applies to” section. After you apply this update, it cannot be uninstalled.
If a users need Adobe Flash Player, they will need to restore to an earlier system restore point and explicitly enable the feature, or completely reinstall Windows and forgo this latest patch.
Adobe has released its predictions for the 2020 holiday season, between November 1 thru December 31, and online retailers are set to score big.
Adobe is predicting record-breaking online sales, totaling some $189 billion. This represents a 33% year-over-year increase. According to the company, this is the equivalent of two years’ worth of growth packed into those two months.
Should the government approve another round of stimulus, spending would be driven up further, likely passing the $200 billion mark. If this happens, it would be a 47% increase.
“As retailers adapt to consumers’ new behaviors in this pandemic, we expect earlier discounts, more shipping and pick-up options and uncertainty around in-store purchases to drive this year’s online holiday sales to record highs,” said John Copeland, head of Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe. “This year is unlike any in the past, and for the first time we are no longer referring to peak holiday sales as Cyber Week – it’s now Cyber Month.”
While large e-commerce entities may seem to be the biggest beneficiaries at first glance, in reality it is small retailers that will benefit most. Accord to the report, small retailers will see their revenue increase 107%, vs 84% for their bigger rivals.
Curbside pickup will also grow in popularity, with BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) expected to account for more than 50% of orders at retailers offering the service.
Although the pandemic may be forcing holiday shoppers online in record numbers, shoppers may develop a taste for the low-hassle benefits of online shopping and BOPIS. If so, it’s a safe bet that many shoppers’ behavior may be permanently altered over the next two months.
Microsoft, Adobe and C3.ai have joined forces to use artificial intelligence (AI) to reinvent customer relationship management (CRM).
The new product, C3 AI CRM, is powered by Microsoft Dynamics and fully integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud. The goal is to deliver “the first enterprise-class, AI-first customer relationship management solution is purpose-built for industries.”
Salesforce, in particular, should be worried by this development. Microsoft has been trying for years to dethrone Salesforce as the CRM king, with little success. While Dynamics 365 has certainly carved out a corner of the market, Salesforce is still the undisputed leader.
The combination of Dynamics’ foundation, C3.ai’s artificial intelligence and Adobe’s “AI-driven solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising, and commerce” may be just the winning combination Microsoft has been looking for.
“This year has made clear that businesses fortified by digital technology are more resilient and more capable of transforming when faced with sweeping changes like those we are experiencing,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with C3.ai and Adobe, we are bringing to market a new class of industry-specific AI solutions, powered by Dynamics 365, to help organizations digitize their operations and unlock real-time insights across their business.”
The companies made a point of highlighting how the digital transformation had changed the requirements for a CRM solution, with general-purpose software no longer meeting customers’ needs.
“Microsoft, Adobe, and C3.ai are reinventing a market that Siebel Systems invented more than 25 years ago,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “The dynamics of the market and the mandates of digital transformation have dramatically changed CRM market requirements. A general-purpose CRM system of record is no longer sufficient. Customers today demand industry-specific, fully AI-enabled solutions that provide AI-enabled revenue forecasting, product forecasting, customer churn, next-best product, next-best offer, and predisposition to buy.”
Microsoft’s open approach to data and integration have already been labeled a big advantage over Salesforce’s approach. Should this new partnership deliver on its promise, Salesforce may soon find itself scrambling to catch up.
As we previously reported, Tim Cook announced what many had predicted: The Mac is officially moving to Apple’s custom silicon.
Apple has been rumored to be moving working on moving the Mac to ARM processors for years, especially as Intel has struggled to keep up with industry developments. In many ways, Apple’s current situation mirrors the situation it found itself in with its last line of chips, the PowerPC semiconductors.
Apple’s Semiconductor History
Used by the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM and Motorola), PowerPC was a RISC-based architecture that had a number of advantages over Intel and other x86 lines. Ultimately, however, Motorola and IBM fell behind Intel, in terms of development and processor speed. Regardless of how much more advanced the PowerPC chips may have been, Intel’s sheer processing speed eventually surpassed it.
To make matters worse, IBM was never able to solve the issues with heat. This was especially evident with the PowerPC G5 line of chips. While extremely powerful for desktop computing, it could never be used in a laptop, consuming too much power and producing too much heat.
After several years of falling behind, at the mercy of IBM and Motorola, Apple jumped ship to Intel. Once again, however, Apple is in the same boat. Intel has been struggling to keep up with demand and the move to 10nm processors, leaving room for its old rival, AMD, to make significant headway.
To make matters even worse, Apple has had issues with some recent MacBook Pro models not being able to sustain high-speed operations because of the heat generated by the Intel processors. Instead, the machines have had to throttle their performance, in some cases making top-end models run slower than low-end and mid-level MacBook Pros.
ARM Chips To the Rescue
The game-changing element for Apple is the rise of ARM chips, which the company uses in its iPhones and iPads. Arm Holding, the creator of ARM processors, was originally a joint venture between Apple and Acorn, before ultimately being acquired by SoftBank.
Unlike Intel or AMD, Arm doesn’t manufacture its own chips. Instead, it designs and licenses them for its customers to manufacture on their own. The company offers different license level, some of which allow customers to modify the designs to better suit their needs.
Apple, however, has the broadest license of all, essentially allowing it to do whatever it wants with Arm’s designs. The results are industry-leading chips that provide unrivaled performance. Case in point is Apple’s recent iPhone SE. Despite having an under-clocked A13 Bionic chip, it significantly outperforms flagship Android phones.
What’s more, Apple’s manufacturing process has been able to keep up with the demand for iPhones and iPads, which far exceed its Mac base. As a result, the writing has been on the wall for some time that Apple would eventually switch to its own custom silicon, taking its fate back into its own hands once again.
Performance and Power
One of the biggest benefits of moving to its own silicon is the ability to deliver Macs that offer better performance while consuming less power. For example, the current generation iPad Pro delivers better performance than most PC laptops on the market, and does so without a single fan to help manage heat.
Macs with Apple Silicon
In the large case of a MacBook, iMac or Mac Pro, the performance possibilities are thrilling. During the demo, Craig Federighi showed one of the new Macs running Final Cut Pro. Not only could he edit and add effects while the video was playing, but Final Cut could run three simultaneous 4K streams.
Final Cut Pro
Developers and Compatibility
While any processor change is a monumental undertaking, Apple has a history of pulling it off, with this being the third such transition.
Xcode Recompile
Federighi highlighted the work the company has done to help ease the process for developers, with many of them able to update their apps with just a few days of work. Microsoft and Adobe have already ported their software to run on the new architecture.
Microsoft Word
In addition, the company will make it possible to ship Universal apps that contain binaries for both Intel and Apple’s CPUs. Apple has labeled this Universal 2, and improved version of the Universal apps that contained PowerPC and Intel binaries during that migration.
In addition, macOS will include Rosetta 2, a translation layer that will run Intel-based software that hasn’t been updated yet. Again, Apple first introduced Rosetta during the Intel migration, allowing the Intel-based Macs to run older PowerPC-based software.
The new version of Rosetta is a significant upgrade, however. Whereas the original Rosetta translated an app at runtime, Rosetta 2 will translate the time of install. This will significantly improve performance of these older apps. Meantime, a just-in-time (JIT) compiler is still available if needed, such as when working with plugins.
In addition, Andreas Wendker demoed Parallels running Linux. This is an important factor, as it shows that virtualization is alive and well on Apple’s silicon.
Parallels on Apple Silicon
He also demoed Shadow of the Tomb Raider running in Rosetta translation mode. Despite running at 1080p, the game was flawlessly smooth.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
As an added bonus, the new ARM-based Macs will be able to run iOS and iPadOS without modification, thanks to the shared architecture.
Mac Running iOS Apps
Custom Silicon—A new Era of Mac Computing
Without a doubt, Apple’s move to its own custom silicon has been a long time coming. The move will help usher in a new era of Mac computing, with Apple firmly in charge of its own processor development.
As a company that has built its experiencing on tight control of the hardware and software, this is a move that will help usher in a new wave of Mac innovation.
“How do we shorten the space between a signal that we get, say in behavioral data that we see show up either in an app or on a website, and then churn through all of the possibilities of what we could present, apply algorithms to determine what is the next best offer and next best experience?” asks Adam Justis, Director of Marketing at Adobe Experience Cloud. “Then how do we present that in a way that actually feels if not real-time pretty close to it? That would not be possible without artificial intelligence.”
Role of AI in Offering a Personalized Shopping Experience is Core
You definitely have the data piece and then the content piece. I would also add how the complexity of all that has certainly exceeded the capacity to manage this in a singular sort of engagement with a customer, let alone at scale millions of times a day. So the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning now is so core. It’s sort of the gearbox that’s turning at the center of the data on one hand and the content and elements, the assets, the offers, on the other that allows for ultimately the coalescing of those things and then the delivery of an experience worth having.
That’s the component pieces that we’re seeing at play and Adobe’s motivation in going into that space. At Adobe when we announced our intent to acquire Magento, we were talking about how does Adobe facilitate or help every experience become shoppable and every moment personal? Really that was a claim we couldn’t make without the Magento piece. It is absolutely a hand in glove relationship especially as we’ve all evolved as consumers.
Advancements in AI Are Going From the Absurd to the Very Real
To imagine that we would be subscribing to socks or that we could one-click purchase just about anything, you need the technology that can keep pace with the expectations. That’s what it’s all about. So many of those experiences that Adobe is intent on enabling our customers to present culminate in a transaction of some sort. Magento is absolutely not only the icing on the cake but it’s also so integral. It’s becoming a fundamental or elemental part of what we’re trying to accomplish.
That (personalized experience) is one of the things that I absolutely love about customer experience management or CXM. In a way I kind of love the absurdity of it. When you think of the scale, to say something like we’re going to make every experience shoppable and every moment personal, to imagine that that’s possible is almost absurd. But when you introduce the advancements that we’re seeing in artificial intelligence and machine learning now it’s literally going from the absurd or the realm of science fiction into very real. That’s what Adobe is looking at.
Without AI Real-Time Personalization Would Not Be Possible
How can we literally take some sort of statement like we’re going to personalize experiences across the customer journey and we’re going to do it at scale and in real-time? Really, unless you’re considering how we’re going to meet the needs of the customer in the moment that they’re expressing that need then it’s really moot. It is absolutely artificial intelligence and machine learning that we’re seeing expressed now across the Adobe Experience Cloud that is making that happen in multiple ways. One of the ways would be simply by shortening that span between the latent genius that marketers are walking around in their heads and actual execution. How can we take some of the friction out of the workflows that allow them to translate their ideas into offers?
How do we shorten the space between a signal that we get, say in behavioral data that we see show up either in an app or on a website, and then churn through all of the possibilities of what we could present, apply algorithms to determine what is the next best offer and next best experience? Then how do we present that in a way that actually feels if not real-time pretty close to it? That would not be possible without artificial intelligence. At Adobe we do that through a product called Adobe Sensei.
Adobe: Without AI Real-Time Personalization Would Not Be Possible
