Adobe Pulls a Visio (by Ralph)
There was a time in the mid-1990s when Visio Corp set forth its plan to become the vendor of drawing tools. It already had the Visio diagramming software; it had acquired the IntelliCAD design software; momentum was on its side. What could possibly go wrong?*
A half-decade earlier, Autodesk Inc had an even grander plan: to be become the vendor of all graphical tools. It had its high-end AutoCAD design software; it acquired the Generic CADD line of low-end design software; it was busy acquiring other forms of graphical software for presentations, molecular design, chaotic theory, virtual reality, Macintosh, and more. What could possibly go wrong?**
This decade, Adobe Systems Inc planned to pervade every area of interactivity. It had its desktop publishing software; it acquired the MacroMedia line of Web publishing tools; it steadily oozed further into the picky field of CAD. What could possibly go wrong?***
This week, we learn from Randall Newton that "Adobe is ending a vertical approach to marketing its 3D technology, but will continue development" because customers are finding Adobe's 3D API difficult to implement.
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*, **, ***) Short answer: Sales of new products were insufficient, and in each case the company eventually retrenched.
Longer answer: Each of these companies went outside of its customers' fields of expertise. Potential customers were unaccustomed to this "foreign" vendor, while existing customers had no interest in the new offerings:
- Visio customers create simplistic diagrams as occasional side jobs; the complexity of CAD requires commitment.
- Autodesk customers create complex models that must be accurate; chaos and virtual reality are inaccurate distractions.
Adobe customers publish 2D publications on paper and the Web that guide the reader/viewer; 3D interactive models offend by the difficulty and randomness of their interaction.