In the past you would generally purchase Photoshop as part of a suite, known as the Creative Suite, or you would purchase a standalone of just the specific product you want. Every 18 months to two years the software would have a new release or update and you would upgrade or purchase a new license or new Creative Suite. This has been the norm for the past decade or so and has also been a contentious challenge as the time frame of releases and updates has become a lot sooner, sometimes even within the same year.
This has irritated almost anyone who has just spent a fortune on the "latest" software to find out that nine months later, their is a better, newer version with more features, that can do more than the previous, but it costs the same, if not less!
The future for Adobe software will be SAAS (Software As A Service) and you can now rent it! But what exactly does this mean, and how is it going to impact your business, is what everyone is asking. And the simple answer - this is possibly the best way forward for both Adobe and its clients.
Why? You rent their latest software and when new updates are released, you automatically get them. No more expense on purchasing software that will be outdated within the year - the developers can now push updates to all users as soon as they are available. If you decide you don't want to do the update right now, you don't have to. Don't want to rent the software? Then don't renew your annual rental. Can you buy Creative Cloud? The simple answer is no. Going forward, the whole new approach to software will be focused on renting it.
This is a bold new approach to a software offering from Adobe, but it might be a viable option for a lot of companies who don't want the expense of updating outdated software. From the users perspective it's a win-win as you have the benefits of a lower cost of entry to get the full set of all the Adobe tools and you get the Adobe Master Collection plus additional tools. Oh and of course you can budget for it accordingly.
For IT this is also a dream come true as the whole process is now managed internally, where IT decides what products to deploy to what machines. If a staff member leaves, they simply change the seat name to another member as the company owns the seats in Team, and IT controls who gets what software.
Centralised billing for purchasing managers makes it that much easier to budget for. Creative managers get the best package of all as they can now collaborate with their teams, sync files to their online storage (100GB - per user) and share files while working on the full set of Master Collection and additional new tools, which will allow them to always stay ahead of the competition.
Going forward we know this will start the trend in the industry and pave the future for software as a rentable product. Now if only they considered "renting tablets" at these low entry points too, as that could make technology available to a much larger group of people currently unable to purchase computers - only time will tell.
