When did Adobe Inc. suddenly become Amazon.com Inc.?

A day after Adobe kicked off its major show in Las Vegas this week, a scan of the headlines revealed the flurry of announcements that usually accompanied a major Amazon event. Adobe announced a partnership on voice artificial intelligence, previewed a connected-car platform, and demonstrated an augmented reality application. And the common denominator was no longer software but Adobe’s work in the cloud.

“This is a cloud show, plain and simple,” John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, said on the opening day of the Adobe Summit 2019 in Las Vegas. “This is a show about the application of being creative in a variety of use cases, but the underpinnings of the conversations are all cloud. The big story here is, Adobe has transformed.”

Furrier spoke with Jeff Frick, co-host of theCUBE, and they discussed the company’s approach to building a data-driven business and the role that acquisitions have played in Adobe’s transformation (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Data-driven model

A key element of Adobe’s transformation from a software firm to an active cloud participant involves personalization at scale. By gathering and gaining insight from data, Adobe can tailor the customer experience in a way that rewards the company and its users.

“They call it the DDOM — the Data-Driven Operating Model,” Frick said. “Now you can make decisions based on real-time data in the way that people are using the product.”

Adobe’s transformation is due in large part to a significant number of acquisitions the company has made over the past several years. The largest was the purchase of the marketing automation software firm Marketo Inc. in September for more than $4 billion.

“Between all the acquisitions, they’ve built quite a huge company, and they’ve brought in a different set of experiences,” Furrier said. “They transformed, but they did it in a way that was clever and smart. They took a slow approach to getting it right.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Adobe Summit 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Adobe Summit 2019. Neither Adobe Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Adobe Summit