If WebEx is worth $3.2 Billion, How Much is Acrobat Connect Worth?

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The news of the day is Cisco’s purchase of WebEx, the videoconferencing and collaboration application for $3.2 billion. That’s a lot of clams, and TechCrunch has a good wrapup of startups that are hot on the heals of WebEx in terms of features (if not mind share).

But one alternative Mike Arrington didn’t list was Acrobat Connect, which is probably the WebEx competitor that is furthest along. For one thing, while WebEx is Windows only, Acrobat Connect is cross platform (because it uses mostly Flash) and seems to keep up very well feature-wise with WebEx. I know Mike Kollen spends a lot of time in both of these, and I think he thinks WebEx is a bit better. But if it’s only a bit better at a value of $3.2 billion, how much is Connect worth?

Hopefully someone went down and bought the Connect team some drinks today or something, because their major competitor has a value of 15% the entire market cap of Adobe. You guys should ask for raises.

What do you all think, is Acrobat Connect by itself worth anywhere near that figure? How does Connect compare to WebEx?

[tags]Adobe, Acrobat Connect, WebEx[/tags]

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  • anonymous

    funny thing is.. Cisco licensed Breeze for their own collaboration tool (MeetingPlace http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/ps5664/ps5669/index.html ) not too long ago.
    http://news.com.com/Cisco,+Macromedia+team+on+Web+conferencing/2100-1012_3-5873830.html

    So.. while the Connect team might be celebrating a bit, I wonder what the MeetingPlace team thinks of this?

  • http://renaun.com Renaun Erickson

    I did not like WebEX, but I also did not use all their features. I like how easy Breeze was to use with out any downloads or installs (of course unless you are presenting).

    Breeze/Connect is something that has been interesting to see how Adobe will use it. Integrating it into Acrobat was a smart move.

    But I think pricing is always been an issue for both camps.

  • http://dougr.net doug

    I wonder what effect this will have on AIM (if any)?
    D.

  • http://www.mikekollen.com Mike Kollen

    Hi Ryan,

    WebEx and Adobe Connect are very similar. They each have unique features that will appeal to different companies. I would compare WebEx to being the Mercedes-Benz of web conferencing with Adobe Connect being the BMW. Both are fantastic cars. WebEx is a bit better for course delivery to company like Boeing since it is their company standard and path of least resistance. For newer companies evaluating web conferencing software, they should give Adobe Connect a serious look though. For companies that have already standardized on WebEx is much harder to make the switch, kind of like changing databases from Oracle to MS SQL Server. It is a very tough sell. There are definitely situations where Adobe Connect is the better choice, particularly for companies with a Flash Platform focus.

    Regards,

    Mike

  • David

    WebEx is alot more mature – market wise. It’s been around for about 8 years now, as opposed to Connect’s 2(?). WebEx did well surviving in what was once a crowded space.

    But MAN, 3.2B? That’s alot of dough. I’ve heard from a colleague from a large company (no names, sorry) that wanted to use Connect for all of it’s corporate web casts (that’s a core part of their business) and they couldn’t get sign off on meeting bandwidth demand. That’s something Adobe needs to sort out quick!

    David

  • http://www.pbell.com Peter Bell

    Valuation is gonna be driven by things like market leadership, revenues and customer acquisition figures. I’ve never used the technology, but I’ve heard a lot of great things about WebEx in terms of business execution and their ability to build a sales team.

    It is fun to compare features and is relevant to the longer game, but at the end of the day it’s much easier to add features to a lousy product that to add customers to a great potential technology – I think that is how Oracle was so successful. They didn’t out engineer in the early days – they just outsold.

    Of course, I have no idea what the revenues or customer figures are for connect and I think Adobe is in a very strong place to leverage existing relationships to build the Connect brand (although I hope that know what it cost them in lost brand equity when they changed the name from Breeze), and the cross platform story is compelling.

  • Glenn

    The worldwide MediaTone network is the underappreciated asset inside WebEx. It is a robust application hosting platform that WebEx is selling to give software vendors (such as BEA and Business Objects) an easy path to SaaS. You cannot appreciate the value of WebEx without breaking out the unique value of MediaTone, which has great scalability and unmatched uptime performance. WebEx was a much lesser-valued company when its sole game was Web collaboration. Be careful about drawing parallels to the value of others in that space.

  • http://www.saas101.com Travis Huch

    Ryan,

    Most people have forgotten that Cisco already purchased a web meeting vendor (Latitude Communications) about 4 years ago. Cisco values the subscription renewal business that Webex has built. That’s something Cisco needs to learn from Webex and is really a key business foundation for being able to have success in SAAS.

  • Ross McLoughlin

    Dude! Get your facts right. WebEx is cross platform. I regularly watch WebEx webinars on my Mac.