MMAdobe Forum Details :: Future Plans?

Still, the question in my mind (and everyone elses, I'm sure) is "How long will Interakt continue to exist?"

Before the acquisition, news, products and updates came out frequently -- since then, however, it's been deathly quiet, leaving me to wonder if there will ever be any new releases...

The Interkat homepage is basically saying "We're not in the market for your business anymore".

Reading between the lines, I'd say that Adobe is planning to either incorporate the Interakt products into DW9, or sell them under their own name as upgrades to DW9.

Being the money-hungry anti-small business that Adobe is, I predict that either of those two scenarios will result in a significant increase in cost, and a subsequent influx (finally!) of products to sufficiently compete with DW and oust it's position in the developer market.

Well shoot, think about it: the costs of Adobe software do not jive with open source type things like php, so why would php developers continue to want to use DW, and us MS developers are moving on to .Net, happily leaving the past behind (and burning bridges as we go) and will increasingly find the increasingly free MS alternatives to be sufficient to the task.

So, y'all at Adobe and Interkat, listen to me: I LOVE INTERAKT, so if you want me to keep my faith and prevent me from moving on too quickly, POST A MISSION STATEMENT on your site and assure me that my past investments were well founded! 

Speak up, and let your supporters know where this is going! Send us a newsletter, update your site, SOMETHING to let us know what to expect in the future!

$0.02.

--J

Calm down, Jon.  First of all, Adobe didn't promise you anything on this site.  Interakt did.  Interakt ceased to exist last September.  The principals of Interakt promised announcements in November of 2006.  They broke their promise, but there may have been a good reason for that.  Unless they enlighten us, we may never know if there was or not.  But that was not something Adobe did.  That was something the principals of Interakt did.  

I understand how you feel.  I was a 3+ year veteran of Team Macromedia when Adobe bought them and everyone was very apprehensive about the future.  But the team was kept informed and made a part of the process where possible and everything turned out very well.  We now have a stronger company with more resources to be more innovative than ever before.  A plus for everyone, especially the user.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the principals of Interakt have chosen the other direction and have not kept their team and users in the loop.  That is unfortunate and is not, in my opinion, the way to make friends and influence people.  But that is not Adobe's fault .. I doubt anyone is holding a gun to anyone's head if they make the promised announcements. I still hold out hope that there is a good reason why promises have been broken and that all will become clear in due time, but as weeks turn into months, that hope starts to fade a little.

Definitely not what any of us would have wanted.  But don't blame Adobe for something that isn't their fault.  They saw something that would benefit their mission, they made an offer and it was accepted.  End of story.

Nancy Gill
Team Interakt Member AND
Adobe Community Expert

Hi,

Nancy, I wouldn't be so sure about the gun :). I'm still alive and I have to admit that I am indeed a promise breaker by not announcing the future of our products.

However, I have solid reasons for it. Unfortunately, I cannot disclose them. My mandate has changed to something different, and my hands are kept busy with company related work.

As soon as I will receive approval for posting something, I will do it. We used to be extremely open as a small company, but this is just not possible as a large company. Maybe this is hard to understand.

Don't blame us too much. In the end, we will continue to deliver innovative solutions for web development. That's all I can say right now.

Sincerely,

Alexandru

Wow .. he's alive!  I was beginning to wonder if you were really part of the new regime or not!  Glad to see you are!

I'm sorry you can't say anything .. feel free to shoot me an email if that would help.  lol

There is a posting on another list that I hoped you would chime in on .. it's NDA so I can't say which one but I'm sure you know.  Hopefully that will be able to happen.

I must confess to being just a bit confused because when Macromedia became part of Adobe, Team MM was kept very much in the loop and this is the same company so I really don't understand all the sudden secrecy, but if you say there is, then I guess I'll take your word for it.

Be well .. hope the little one is doing well!

Nancy

Hello Nancy,

Indeed, is the same company and we can provide some information to Team InterAKT users. However, the problem we had was that we had no new information to communicate to them as the important decisions, so waited by Team members, have been crystallized very late in the game.

It seems that now things a beginning to clarify and that we will be able to start offering news, first to Team InterAKT and then to the public.

Best regards,

Cristinel

Hi Alexandru,

Glad to hear from you again -- As I said in my post, I, and many others, just need a little reaffirmation of your (Interakts) intent to continue to provide the excellent products and services have become somewhat addicted to!

Hope all is well, and looking forward to news in the near future!

--Jon

>It seems that now things a beginning to clarify and that we will be able to start offering news, first to Team InterAKT and then to the public.

Cool beans .. feel free to go for it any time.  I'm sure the rest of the team is as anticipatory as I am.  

btw .. you may wish to remove the Christmas holidays message from the top of all the posts.   :)

Happy New Year!

Nancy

I'm starting to feel a great deal of frustration myself.  Nancy, I'm hoping you will be able to offer some insight into the future support of InterAKT products.

I was really excited, and a little nervous, when I heard about the Adobe acquisition.  InterAKT already had a great line of products, and with the Adobe team behind them, I thought they were sure to excel.  After the Macromedia acquisition, I felt confident that Adobe would not throw us to the wolves as they did not dismantle our beloved Dreamweaver and ColdFusion.  However, I'm not feeling the same love with the InterAKT products.

I understand that the promises for announcements came from this website, but when are we going to hear something straight from the horse's mouth?  This isn't a merger, so why is the burden of information on the InterAKT guys?

Also, what is happening with support?  In the past, I could always count on the InterAKT team to help me with my issues.  Granted, most of these issues were brought on by myself, but Ionut and the rest of the guys always showed me the light.  Now, I have an outstanding issue with the Send Mail component that is driving me crazy.  All I get from the InterAKT team is

"I'm sorry but there is not much that we can do in this regard, as this is not caused by the code in MX Send Email, as this would happen all the time. This is either a server connection problem, or maybe sometimes the SMTP server is not responding."

I've worked in technical support and IT for over 10 years.  That is the big "cop out" answer that support people give you when they just aren't interested in your issues.  On one hand, I have my web host telling me it's the component, and I have InterAKT telling me it is the web host.  I'm caught in the middle with no help from either side.  The thread is private as I gave the InterAKT team full access to my website, FTP, etc.  Otherwise, you would be able to read that my CFMail script works fine everytime proving that it is not an SMTP issue.

I don't know whether to drop my web host or drop the InterAKT products.  One of them is unreliable, and I'm starting to think that neither of them would be much of a loss at this point.

Nancy, I'm hoping you can tell me when Adobe is going to take over support so that I may have a resolution for this issue?  I understand the forums are a free form of support, but like with so many other cases, you get what you pay for, and I'm getting nothing.

Thanks,

Lee

Hi Lee .. I apologize for not responding to this sooner .. killer day today.  :)

I'm starting to feel a great deal of frustration myself.  Nancy, I'm hoping you will be able to offer some insight into the future support of InterAKT products.

It appears that the majority of the Interakt products have been discontinued.  Some will show up in the future as part of Flex, Dreamweaver .. maybe even Flash components .. who knows?  I don't know much more than you do .. Cristinel and a couple of others have made a few comments here and there if you check through the forums and they really are the ones who can tell you.  I don't work for Adobe and I didn't work for Interakt either.  :)

I was really excited, and a little nervous, when I heard about the Adobe acquisition.  InterAKT already had a great line of products, and with the Adobe team behind them, I thought they were sure to excel.  After the Macromedia acquisition, I felt confident that Adobe would not throw us to the wolves as they did not dismantle our beloved Dreamweaver and ColdFusion.  However, I'm not feeling the same love with the InterAKT products.

From a business perspective, it's apples and oranges .. or perhaps for a better comparison, cherry tomatoes with those big beefsteak tomatoes.   .. how's that for a visual?   :)

Interakt was a nice little and growing company .. but Macromedia was much bigger, both in terms of size and presence.  They were innovative .. they took chances .. they have breathed some life into the giant rambling Adobe.  It's worked very well.  

The Interakt acquisition just isn't the same thing.   They got something like 32 employees and a few products that they wanted to continue .. but many of those 32 employees are good programmers in areas former MM employees just weren't.

That's half the reason.  The other half would be the fact that Adobe didn't have a presence in that part of the world and buying Interakt gave them an instant office already established .. instant solution.

It made a lot of sense for both reasons.

I understand that the promises for announcements came from this website, but when are we going to hear something straight from the horse's mouth?  This isn't a merger, so why is the burden of information on the InterAKT guys?

IMO, and this is just my opinion, Adobe didn't promise to do anything on this website .. nor did Adobe promise to say anything .. that promise came from this site and I don't know what happened.  Alexandru said a couple of things a little while ago and they will probably say more here .. but what and when?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Also, what is happening with support?  In the past, I could always count on the InterAKT team to help me with my issues. 

I have no idea.  I've never used paid support here for anything.

Nancy, I'm hoping you can tell me when Adobe is going to take over support so that I may have a resolution for this issue?  I understand the forums are a free form of support, but like with so many other cases, you get what you pay for, and I'm getting nothing.

I really wouldn't know .. if you're talking about Adobe taking over the support on this site, I doubt that will happen.  This isn't Adobe's site .. they have support on their site.  For products discontinued since the merger, they are not Adobe's responsibility.  As to what the former Interakt principals will do for those products, ask them.

I wish I could tell you more.  I don't know why more hasn't been said here.  I get the impression they aren't supposed to say anyt

Thanks for your response, Nancy.  I understand killer days :)

I know you've shared all that you know.  I guess I just don't know that much about acquisitions.  I've worked for software development companies that have been bought out by larger companies, but in those cases, the new "mother company" took over everything, and we got all of our directives from our new bosses.

It just seems like Adobe has bought them out but hasn't restructured anything.  The minute they bought out MM, the website was completely taken over, and all the products were branded by Adobe.  I totally understand that these were completely different acquisitions, but I guess I would have thought it would have been easier for Adobe to absorb InterAKT than it did MM just because of the size and everything.

Could you post a link to Scott Fegette's blog?  I've used the MM products for years, but I'm really not all that familiar with the different players, with the exception of Ben Forta, but who doesn't know him ;)

What would be best for my organization (and my sanity) would be to completely drop the InterAKT product line.  But lets face it, they really had a good thing going until this acquisition, and there's really no competition out there.  I don't have years and months to redevelop my own components.  And as much as I absolutely love ColdFusion, I'm starting to look toward .NET 2.0.  It just seems to be easier to get these ready-made components (and AJAX at that) for Visual Studio.

Are there any blogs out there that address Adobe's desire to compete in the .NET 2.0 arena?  I'm sure it's undesirable for them with all the tools available from Microsoft, but there's a lot of people like me that don't want to give up our beloved Dreamweaver.

Thanks for your input.

Lee