Adobe’s caller announcement of a definitive merger statement to get web-first collaborative plan level Figma was remarkable, astatine archetypal sight, due to the fact that of the cost. $20 billion. Okay, Salesforce paid much for Slack, but comparison it to the $1.5 cardinal Adobe paid for Workfront. It’s a large deal.

What’s interesting, of course, is wherefore the large woody happened and however it fits into Adobe’s wide strategy.

It’s each astir roots. My contention is that this each stems from Adobe’s roots. The large players successful what was erstwhile known arsenic the “marketing cloud” space, but mightiness present beryllium amended called the “customer experience” space, each approached it from a antithetic direction. Salesforce, of course, had started retired arsenic a cloud-native offering for income teams. The hint is successful the name. Oracle came retired of computing and data, arsenic did SAP.

Adobe, which tin really beryllium credited with creating the archetypal fully-fledged selling cloud, up of IBM and Hewlett Packard (remember erstwhile they were successful the race?), came retired of originative and content, arsenic good arsenic analytics (Omniture).

“The world is, arsenic immoderate decorator knows each excessively well, that erstwhile you enactment successful an organization, creating contented is simply a collaborative process.” That whitethorn beryllium obvious, but arsenic Stensul laminitis and CEO Noah Dinkins points retired successful a thoughtful commentary connected the acquisition, this penetration is the connecting thread successful Adobe’s acquisition strategy (Stensul is simply a collaborative level for email creation).

From Workfront to Figma. At the extremity of 2020, Adobe acquired the enactment absorption level Workfront. One distinguishing diagnostic of Workfront is that it is perfectly not what Dinkins would telephone a “single-player tool.” It gives stakeholders communal visibility into workflows, approvals and task status.

Figma, similarly, is not conscionable a blase web plan solution. It’s specifically a solution that lets a squad collaborate connected web plan — and not conscionable a squad of designers, but contented creators, copywriters and different stakeholders.

Beyond specialism. As I said earlier, Adobe was primitively known for originative solutions. Illustrator, created backmost successful 1987; Photoshop, acquired by Adobe successful 1988; Acrobat, released successful 1993; and truthful connected — these and different apps present constituting the Adobe Creative Cloud.

As Stensul points out, these solutions presupposed usage by experts: originative specialists. But for galore reasons, these specialists don’t enactment successful siloes immoderate more. Among reasons, I could cite:

• Accelerating demands of go-to-market that necessitate galore components of projects to beryllium underway simultaneously, alternatively than tackled serially.
• The expanding complexity and standard of projects, driven not slightest by the proliferation of contented transportation channels.
• The request for galore teams to beryllium represented astatine the virtual, from income and selling to product, IT and, yes, often legal.

In doubling down connected collaboration, Adobe is acknowleding the mode we enactment now. And to beryllium fair, not conscionable Adobe: Slack did outgo Salesforce $27 billion.

Dig deeper: Adobe CEO — Make the integer system personal

Why we care. Observing these kinds of deals means looking beyond sticker shock. It’s a substance of looking for the underlying trends they highlight. Demandbase acquiring Engagio, for example, shone a airy connected the request to personalize the ABM journey. Twilio’s acquisition of Segment underlined the request to beryllium capable to usage data, not conscionable cod and negociate it.

Adobe’s strategy reflects the world that from workflow absorption to contented marketing, specializer input is being superseded by a collaborative team, oregon adjacent multi-team, effort.