Adobe to increase investment in Ireland


6 Dec 2005

Adobe, which yesterday completed its US$2.6bn acquisition of Macromedia, is planning to increase its investment in its Irish operations and will create new jobs, the vice-president of the company’s EMEA division told siliconrepublic.com. The company currently employs 80 people here.

Pierre Van Beneden said the acquisition of Macromedia will turn Adobe into the world’s sixth largest software company.

Van Beneden explained the combination of the two companies will enable Adobe to expand beyond a creative design technology player to embrace developments in enterprise software and opportunities in the mobile world.

“We are the leader for creativity in the world. Some 70pc of magazines you read are touched by at least one of our products. With the Macromedia acquisition we can extend our reach to everything that’s created on the web.”

Van Beneden said the company’s technology has moved from the graphic design bench to the fast-paced world of industry in terms of being deployed as part enterprise resource planning (ERP) and in terms of product life cycle and document management solutions. The latter will prove vital in applications such as corporate governance.

“Our combined platforms can now be extended to reach into the backend of organisations as part of a SAP large ecosystem or an IBM backend, and also across legacy platforms in the banking world. This is going to strengthen the return on investment for customers.

“As well as this technologies such as Flash are now being tailored to access other devices such as mobile phones. Individuals will be able to access the web and gather intelligence using our software. The two companies are going to create a platform that anybody can access from individuals on the street to large enterprise customer transactions.”

Questioned about the effect the merger will have on the companies Irish operations, which employ 80 people, Van Beneden said: “Ireland will remain a major platform for us and we are planning to strengthen our investment there. It will mean more jobs and we have started to employ new employees.”

Van Beneden did not disclose the potential job numbers or investment figure the company plans to make in the Irish market.

By John Kennedy