Carlo Viale has been Marketing Director for Italy since December 2002. Born in Milan in 1968, after completing his classical high school diploma and a degree in Economics and Commerce at the Catholic University of Milan, he attended a master’s course in public relations and public affairs at Burson-Marsteller, the Italian branch of one of the world’s leading PR agency networks. Having gained significant experience in marketing communications at Burson-Marsteller, he has been with Adobe Systems since September 1997, where he has made a significant professional journey, holding various roles until his current position.
Who is Adobe? Founded in 1982, Adobe revolutionizes the way the world uses ideas and information. For over twenty years, Adobe technologies have helped redefine communication for people and businesses, setting new standards for the creation and distribution of content anywhere and anytime. From images for print, to videos and movies, to dynamic digital content for various types of media, the impact of Adobe solutions is evident for companies and for everyone who creates, views, or manages information. What is the Italian software market like and what are the prospects? The Italian software market generally feels the modest performance of the entire ICT sector of which it is a part. This is not surprising given that GDP is almost stagnant as well. However, the latest Assinform report points to application software and professional IT services as the potential Italian path in computing. From this perspective, Adobe is ready to seize this opportunity as it boasts a very broad range of solutions based on widely adopted standard technologies worldwide such as PDF and Flash. What is the relationship between Italian companies and Adobe products? The pervasiveness of Adobe PDF and Adobe Flash technologies means that Italian companies cannot avoid engaging with them. This allows Adobe to more easily promote its next-generation solutions, which based precisely on these standards enable a significant improvement in how companies and individuals distribute, manage, and interact with information. What is Adobe’s vision? Adobe’s vision leverages the technological potential of the PDF and Flash formats that improve the ways information is created, managed, and distributed. The Adobe Reader and Flash Player programs are already available on hundreds of millions of computers, mobile phones, and devices worldwide, allowing people to effectively use all content without limitations of space, time, or device. Thanks to a company culture focused on innovation, Adobe continues to reinvent how information is perceived, created, and distributed. What are your products and which ones do you focus on the most? Adobe’s products vary to meet the needs of different markets. There are products for professional creatives in the media & publishing sectors, those aimed at knowledge workers like Acrobat or Breeze, products for the developer market like ColdFusion and Flex, those for end users and enthusiasts wishing to develop, enhance, and distribute images and content. Finally, there are applications for the enterprise market with the LiveCycle offering, equipped with forms, policy servers, and various functions that enable developing workflows and applications that handle, manage, and share documents. What is your typical customer? Given the wide range of products, our typical customer ranges from individual users to large enterprises. Who are your competitors? It is very difficult to compile a meaningful list of Adobe’s competitors. On one hand, Adobe offers solutions targeted to a very wide range of clients, from consumer users to large corporations; on the other hand, the pervasiveness of its technologies (Adobe PDF and Flash) is currently hard to match. Some companies that can be considered competitors of Adobe in certain market segments, such as Apple and Microsoft, operate as its partners in others. Therefore, we can conclude that there are multiple competitors to Adobe in individual vertical markets, such as Quark in printing and prepress, but none able to simultaneously compete across all or nearly all of its business areas. What does Adobe offer more than competitors present in Italy, why choose you? In over 20 years of activity, Adobe has always stood out for the quality and broad range of its products, as well as for its ability to respond to and anticipate market needs. With the acquisition of Macromedia and growing revenues, Adobe guarantees maximum organizational and financial solidity to its clients. How did the last year go and what are your future goals? Last year also confirmed the growth trend, which remains a goal for the coming year. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe has created the world’s sixth-largest software group with 2.7 billion in revenue. Today more than 90% of professional creatives use Photoshop, pdf documents represent about 10% of web content, Adobe PDF is present on 90% of computers, and Flash is installed on 98% of internet-connected desktop computers. Future objectives are to combine PDF and Flash and thus create a pool of pervasive technologies across all PCs and enable the use of new server-side solutions.
Pubblicato in Digital Tools
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