The broader market

As with any major acquisition, the Adobe/Magento marriage will have a ripple effect across the broader enterprise software market. For one, rival eCommerce platform Shopify, who was long thought of as a likely acquisition target for Adobe, has seen its share price tumble 5% (but is still up nearly 40% for the year) on the announcement of the deal. Many analysts are now calling their lofty valuations into question as the new Adobe/Magento tie-up may slow Shopify’s move up-market as they target larger enterprise clients.

Magento’s current partners – their eco-system of integrators, agency partners, and plugin vendors – will also be affected. While many of them – certainly the larger ones – already work with Adobe, there are a lot of smaller ones that consciously chose to focus only on the lower to mid-range segment of the market. Maintaining a capable and profitable engineering team is already difficult enough these days and many smaller shops find it easier to do so around the LAMP stack than Java EE. The bureaucracy and vetting that may come from Adobe will also concern these partners and my guess is many of them are already looking to more accessible eCommerce alternatives.

All of this will breed uncertainty in the market and create an opportunity for Adobe’s competitors. Expect the likes of Salesforce and Oracle to seek to take advantage of this by sowing some good old-fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). And, expect prospective clients – even some of the larger ones – to perhaps consider some of the more recent upstarts in the space, especially the emerging next-generation SaaS pure-plays that are threatening to disrupt the market already.