
Yes, there was a vitally important marketing moment when all this was unveiled. To call Adobe’s cloud transformation a “product launch” almost undervalues the gravity of what the company was taking to market. Commandeering GTM channels for customer care.Hitting the gas, igniting the base, and confronting the skeptics.Finding inspiration and laying the foundation.

Four and a half years later, Narayen was stepping on stage at Adobe's annual user conference to announce to the world that they had just completed one of the largest cloud transformations in history, and would be a cloud-only company going forward.Ī cloud transformation of this magnitude had never been accomplished by a company of Adobe's size and scale before, but they'd pulled it off.ĭive deeper into a specific area of Adobe’s cloud transformation: But they knew it was the only way forward. Especially for an organization as large and entrenched as Adobe. Garrett and Narayen knew that laying a new and more durable foundation for the company - one that would be impervious to any future economic downturns - would not be an easy task. “Shantanu and I looked at each other and said: you know what, we should never have across the board layoffs again. It was painful.ĬFO Mark Garrett and CEO Shantanu Narayen had a tough conversation: “It was awful,” Garret said in an interview with Zuora.

In December 2008, the San Jose-based company announced it would be laying off ~600 employees, or roughly 8% of its workforce. It’s hard to imagine a world without Photoshop.īut the 2008 recession hit Adobe hard. " How they launched it" is a recurring series of deep dives exploring how the world’s best teams launch new products and features.Ĭompany: Adobe Launch: Cloud-only Launch date: Monday, May 6, 2013Īdobe is one of those companies that feels like it’s always been here.
