Q&A: Adobe's Simon Hayhurst on NAB
DCP by Jan Ozer 
With Apple and Avid choosing to skip NAB, I was curious as to Adobe’s thoughts about the value of the show to them, and why they stayed in. Once I started talking with Simon Hayhurst, senior director of product management for Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization, several other questions came to mind, and we ended up chatting for about an hour or soâ€â€starting with NAB, and then ranging into topics such as the success of CS3 on the Mac platform, the future of video editing products, Adobe’s P2 support, and the long-term value of metadata. DCP: What is the value of NAB to Adobe’s audio and video production tools business? Hayhurst: When I think of NAB, I see 110,000 people from the broadcast industry gathered in one place. It’s phenomenal the business that gets done. Contacts at NAB ultimately led to a significant deal with the BBC and other remarkable deals across multiple geographies and industries that I can’t yet identify. Over the last 24 months, we roughly doubled our tools business, and that’s in a market that growing at 11 percent to 13 percent annually. It’s clear we’re taking business away from someone, and our goal is to again double our business over the next two years. To do that, we have to double down and invest more. Obviously, if you’re losing share, it’s a different problem altogetherâ€â€you really have to figure out where to invest your marketing dollars. For us, at this stage of our business, NAB is the single most significant thing we can do to drive our business. read more...
With Apple and Avid choosing to skip NAB, I was curious as to Adobe’s thoughts about the value of the show to them, and why they stayed in. Once I started talking with Simon Hayhurst, senior director of product management for Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization, several other questions came to mind, and we ended up chatting for about an hour or soâ€â€starting with NAB, and then ranging into topics such as the success of CS3 on the Mac platform, the future of video editing products, Adobe’s P2 support, and the long-term value of metadata. DCP: What is the value of NAB to Adobe’s audio and video production tools business? Hayhurst: When I think of NAB, I see 110,000 people from the broadcast industry gathered in one place. It’s phenomenal the business that gets done. Contacts at NAB ultimately led to a significant deal with the BBC and other remarkable deals across multiple geographies and industries that I can’t yet identify. Over the last 24 months, we roughly doubled our tools business, and that’s in a market that growing at 11 percent to 13 percent annually. It’s clear we’re taking business away from someone, and our goal is to again double our business over the next two years. To do that, we have to double down and invest more. Obviously, if you’re losing share, it’s a different problem altogetherâ€â€you really have to figure out where to invest your marketing dollars. For us, at this stage of our business, NAB is the single most significant thing we can do to drive our business. read more...
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