Adobe is looking to release a cloud version of their creative applications online called creativecloud. From what I gather from their website it looks to be like a office365 version for creatives. This is probably a step in the right direction, Adobe software usually run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars, and buying the licenses for that software usually incur a huge capital expenditure for startups looking use these applications.
Adobe creativecloud is looking to launch in the first half of this year, and promise among other things:
All the Creative Suite desktop tools. Download and use any Creative Suite tool you choose, or work with other products you’ve been wanting to try — including Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® and newAdobe Edge and Adobe Muse.
Cloud storage. Store up to 20GB of data that you can access from virtually anywhere.
Also Adobe is promising key components of their traditional licensed software into a subscription based model, their FAQ mentions the following components will be offered as part of their creativecloud offering:
Adobe Creative Cloud offers all your favorite Creative Suite desktop applications (Adobe Photoshop®, InDesign®, Illustrator®, Dreamweaver®, and more), new Adobe Touch Apps, and collaboration features that will enable you to go beyond content creation on the desktop to creating and publishing across channels and med
While it still sounds like you’ll have to download and install the applications, the service is still pay as you go, meaning it’s not strictly a cloud offering but rather a subscription based license for traditional applications. All for $49.99 a month (on a 12 month contract) isn’t cheap, but it could be an alternative way to look at software as a operating expenditure rather than a capital expenditure and help startups and bootstrap companies take off without getting held down by expensive software cost.
So while technically it’s not cloud computing (although I could be wrong), it does offer some advantages over spending thousands of dollars in a single purchase to use these applications. Adobe is taking things in the right direction, for more info visit their site here, or follow them on twitter.