Creative Suite – Adobe’s flagship software package comprising “perpetual” boxed versions of design and production software such as Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver and InDesign – has been discontinued.
Subscription-based Creative Cloud is now the new flagship at Adobe.
Adobe made the announcement during its annual Adobe Max Conference in Los Angeles today.
You can still buy the current Adobe CS6 from Adobe, but the software will not get any future feature updates.
You will still get security patches and bug fixes, and Adobe has committed that CS6 will be compatible with the next major version of Windows and OS X.
Existing CS owners (especially CS6) will get aggressive discounts to entice them to move to CC.
Adobe had packaged its stable of creative and design software – together with software it had gained through its acquisition of Macromedia – as Adobe Creative Suite (CS) back in 2003.
Adobe CS is termed “perpetual” since you pay once and own it forever.
You can use it for as long as you like – barring compatibility issues, security patches and termination of bug fixes over time.
A decade on, the component software will no longer be available as part of the Creative Suite packaging.
Customers will have to rent them by subscribing to Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) instead.
There are subscription plans for individuals, small teams and large enterprises; and customers can choose to subscribe to individual component software or the entire suite.
There are also discounted prices for teachers and students.
Adobe Creative Cloud was first launched in the US together with the launch of Adobe CS6 in April 2012. Since then, it has garnered more than half-a-million subscribers.
Adobe CC for teams debuted in Singapore in January this year.
It offers centralised administration and deployment of multiple licenses of the the suite, extra software support from Adobe experts, as well as 100GB of cloud storage per user.
Adobe CC for individuals and enterprise debuts officially today.
Adobe CC for individuals only get 20GB of cloud storage while Adobe CC for enterprise is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the number of seats purchased.
Software from Adobe CC will still be installed locally after being downloaded onto the computer.
The computers need to connect to the Internet at least once every 30 days for Adobe to verify the validity of the subscription, although users are allowed to use the software without verification for up to six months.
The subscription-based CC may help Adobe fight piracy, even though that was not the main impetus for moving to the subscription model.
Non CS software, such as Photoshop Elements and Lightroom will still remain available in traditional perpetual versions for the time being.
There is also a special “no-cloud” version for organisations that cannot access a public cloud service – eg. governments, some large enterprises, and educational institutions.
These versions will presumably not contain the cloud storage and collaboration aspects of Adobe CC.
Tags: Adobe, Creative Cloud, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Los Angeles, MAX, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Singapore
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