Advertisment

`Adobe's Indian development center is critical for our growth'

author-image
DQW Bureau
New Update

Bruce Chizen, President & CEO, Adobe Systems Inc.Bruce Chizen, President & CEO, Adobe Systems Inc, runs day-to-day operations, provides leadership, and oversees strategic direction and sales. As former Executive VP (Worldwide Products and Marketing), he is also responsible for closely aligning marketing functions and product development to effectively respond to market dynamics with

customer-focused Adobe solutions. While at Adobe, Chizen has defined marketing strategies and led the development of products as Senior VP and GM (Graphics Professional Division) and VP and GM (Consumer Division).

Advertisment

Chizen holds a bachelor of science degree in health science from Brooklyn College, City University of New York and serves on the board of directors for both the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and

eCircles.com.

Next week, he will be in Delhi for two days, wherein he will lay the foundation stone of a new development center in NOIDA besides interacting with senior government officials. In an e-mail interview with the DQ Week, Chizen talks about the relevance of India for Adobe.

Is there any specific agenda of your Indian visit?

Advertisment

During this visit to India, I plan to spend some time with the local Adobe engineers, review expansion options for the facility and meet with key industry leaders, customers and members of the press. The focus of the meetings will be on the articulation of Adobe's `Network Publishing' vision. Network Publishing enables visually-rich, personalized content to be available to anyone, anytime on any device.

Where does India stand in terms of market importance for Adobe worldwide?

Over half of Adobe's revenue comes from outside the US. The Indian market is important in this mix. It has great potential, but the piracy rates of more than 90 percent are a major problem. If piracy rates can be reduced with the help of industry-wide organizations, such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and NASSCOM, Adobe would expect to see revenues from India increase significantly. While the revenue that Adobe sees from India is small compared to most developed countries, the growth is exponential. In the last two years, the revenue from Adobe's India facility grew at a rate of 65 to 70 percent.

Advertisment

Would Adobe be interested in acquisitions in India?

We continue to look at companies around the world with appropriate technology and products, which are strategic to Adobe's business.

What future do you see for India in the global software market?

Advertisment

India is an important player in the global software economy. As it becomes more and more difficult for companies to find talented workers in their native countries, India's highly-skilled engineering force will factor into the success of global software companies.

How important is the Indian development center for Adobe?

Adobe's center in India is critical for the company's growth and is involved in many important and revolutionary product and technology developments. We see the contribution from Adobe's India center expanding in coming years. Currently, the India campus makes up approximately seven to eight percent of Adobe engineering resources and is Adobe's largest engineering center outside US.

Advertisment

Has the recent slowdown in the technology market made any impact on Adobe?

Fortunately, we haven't seen a correlation between the slowdown in PC sales and Adobe's business. Our business is being driven by the increasing need for companies to create compelling, differentiating content on the Web. Adobe's business is not dependent on the number of PCs sold, but on the amount of content that people are consuming on the Web, eBooks, PDAs and cellphones. However, we are not immune to an overall economic slowdown and will be watching carefully.

On the existing number of PCs, Adobe has only penetrated five percent of the market with full versions of its Adobe Acrobat product, which allows companies to create reliable, secure documents.

Advertisment