Adobe Systems Incorporated announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. The combination of Adobe and Macromedia will provide customers a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Together, the two companies will meet a wider set of customer needs and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets, particularly in the mobile and enterprise segments. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adobe’s and Macromedia’s closing prices on Friday, April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock. Upon the close of the transaction, Macromedia stockholders will own approximately 18 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis. In the combined company, Chizen will continue as chief executive officer and Shantanu Narayen will remain president and chief operating officer. Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Macromedia, will join Adobe as president of worldwide field operations. Murray Demo will remain executive vice president and chief financial officer. Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Charles Geschke will remain as co-chairmen of the Board of Directors of the combined company and Rob Burgess, chairman of the Macromedia Board of Directors, will join the Adobe Board. The two companies are developing integration plans that build on the cultural similarities and the best business and product development practices from each company. Adobe also announced its Board of Directors has approved a post-acquisition stock repurchase program of $1 billion. The repurchase program is in addition to the Adobe’s existing stock repurchase programs and is expected to commence following the completion of the acquisition. The repurchases will be funded from available working capital. http://www.adobe.com, http://www.macromedia.com
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A year (or two or three) ago, I contributed a regular column to www.gilbane.com and came to enjoy having an alternative outlet for my musings. The theme then was “tribal knowledge – a monthly column dedicated to dispelling hi tech myths and sharing life’s lessons.” Well, I am not sure how many new “life lessons” I may have to share – but I can say with absolute confidence that “hi-tech myths” continue to breed, multiply and prosper. Having crossed back into “the dark side” of the business as my analyst friends privately call the enterprise software industry, I am going to narrow my focus to the latest white hot hi tech category – compliance. So, this is just a “hello world” posting – giving fair warning that I have a long list of double talk, meaningfully ambiguous terminology and self referential world views that I am looking forward to skewering – and I hope someone out there will enjoy reading these postings as much as I anticipate writing them. Thanks for the forum Frank.
Microsoft Corp. and Dassault Systemes announced that they will collaborate to support Microsoft’s Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) format in Dassault Systemes’ 3D XML format. XAML is the format for “Avalon”, the code name of the next presentation subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Avalon provides the foundation for building applications and high-fidelity experiences, blending together user interfaces, documents and media content while exploiting the full power of users’ computers. Avalon provides native support for declarative, markup-based programming with XAML. 3D XML is a universal, lightweight XML-based format that enables users to capture and share live, accurate 3D data quickly and easily. Dassault Systemes will use the 3D XML format in its entire line of products: CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SMARTEAM, SolidWorks and Spatial. Compatibility between 3D XML and XAML will enable users of 3D solutions to view, modify and customize 3D objects and take advantage of this 3D experience in any XAML-based application. http://www.3ds.com, http://www.microsoft.com
We’ve posted our results in time for the conference session on Blogs, Wikis, and RSS as Enterprise Content Applications tomorrow morning. Keep in mind this is an informal survey and only has 43 responses so far. We will keep the survey going and update the results.
In the course of two days of sessions here at the Gilbane Conference it is
clear that, when it comes to compliance, we’ve overloaded the word
"architecture." We have had a fair amount of talk in some of the
conference sessions about "compliance architectures." We have also
seen different technology architectures used to support compliance systems.
It is easy to understand why at least some of the people in the audience
could get all of this confused. Sometimes it seems that even the speakers
have the two "architectures" confused and wrapped around each
other. The bad result that comes from this goes beyond a few confusing
conversations. If there is enough confusion, the consequence is a
misdirected approach to addressing compliance issues in individual
organizations.
So… I’ll take a crack at getting the terms and ideas unwound from each
other. Think of these as "first cut" definitions–aimed at
helping people who are just now coming to terms with compliance lingo to
understand what is going on. If you can help out here–improving the
definitions–please add some comments.
Ephox launched a major upgrade to its EditLive! EditLive! for XML enables business users to easily create and edit XML content in a simple, browser-based tool and provides developers with an easy to use XML forms development environment. EditLive! for XML is an XML forms solution combining browser-based access, comprehensive rich text authoring capabilities and cross platform support. Version 3.0 also introduces a desktop edition of the forms development environment and a new form solution file format which decreases the amount of effort required to design and deploy XML forms. The EditLive! for XML solution for XML forms makes it possible to combine rich text (graphics, rich text, tables) with strict data types (numbers, dates, plain text) to leverage the best features of forms, documents and spreadsheets. EditLive! for XML also consists of a development environment for XML forms which reduces the costs and complexities of designing and deploying solutions for the contribution and editing of XML content. Evaluation versions are available for download from http://www.ephox.com
This morning I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the
Gilbane Conference that
included Carole Stern Switzer of the Open
Compliance and Ethics Group, Lynn Brewer of The
Integrity Institute, and Michael Evans, Ernst and Young partner responsible
for developing the compliance architecture within Ernst and Young. One
objective of the discussion was to provide the IT people and project and product
management people, who make up a substantial part of the audience at Gilbane
Conference sessions, with some of the conceptual tools they need to help create
more effective compliance and risk management programs within their companies.
One of the questions raised from the audience toward the end of the
discussion asked about the "enablers" of an effective compliance
program. Lynn Brewer’s answer was interesting. Her observation has
been that companies that are making really effective use of compliance, rather
than just treating it as a checkmark, are typically ahead of the curve in terms
of investing in and integrating IT systems into the compliance effort.
Both Lynn and Carole Switzer argued that one of the key "enablers" is
the early and active engagement of people doing hands-on work on the IT side of
an organization.
John Yunker is speaking on globalization, as part of the session, Content Management Globalization. John’s a great speaker, and has a very useful blog, Web Globalization News.
Eric Silberstein is the founder of Idiom and an expert on DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Eric and I have done a couple of webinars recently on DITA and globalization, and his presentation today is a more comprehensive version of the one he has given in the Webinars. Eric is also an excellent speaker, and has a lot of credibility on this topic. Click here for the Idiom-sponsored white paper on DITA, and click here for Robin Cover’s resource page on DITA.
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