Adobe has tapped an outsider to head technology strategy, particularly its evolving cloud portfolio.
Abhay Parasnis, its new chief technology officer and senior vice president of platform technology and services, is an Indian engineer whose career includes positions at IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. He most recently was president and COO of Kony, a company that specializes in software for mobile application development. The company’s last CTO was Kevin Lynch, who left two years ago to join Apple.
“Our cloud platforms are the foundation for our next phase of innovation and growth as a company, and Abhay is the ideal candidate to lead this initiative,” said Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen, in a statement.
Adobe began transitioning its software to subscription-based pricing four years ago. Its cloud portfolio includes three separate offerings: Creative Cloud (which includes its design and photo editing applications), Marketing Cloud (for digital campaigns), and Document Cloud (for electronic workflows, such as contract management).
Parasnis isn’t granting media interviews yet. However, in a short Q&A posted by Adobe, he talked up his patents in the area of file-synchronization—work from his days at Microsoft and comments that should get the attention of upstarts Box, Slack and Dropbox.
He notes:
“We broke ground on how to provide secure, internet-based collaboration, which has gained great momentum within enterprise workflows today. I look forward to working with the Adobe Document team and providing the architecture and platforms to scale the business.”
In mid-June, Adobe reported record Q2 revenue of $1.16 billion. The Marketing Cloud alone contributed $327 million. Annualized recurring revenue for its digital media products was $2.35 billion at the end of the quarter.
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