Adobe is one of the largest software companies worldwide (top 5 based on market cap and top 5 based on revenues). During the last decade, it successfully transitioned from a licensed revenue model to a subscription revenue model, giving it additional business visibility and predictability. Similar to other enterprise software companies, Adobe created partner programs to accelerate enterprise adoption of its solutions.
Adobe offers creative, marketing, and commerce solutions, primarily through its Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud. Products offered include Photoshop, Illustrator, and other popular design tools, as well as pls analytics, email marketing, commerce, CMS, and digital asset management products. For fiscal year 2023, Adobe's revenue was estimated at $18 billion.
Digital experience companies and marketing agencies create digital journeys for their customers and utilize various solutions from the market to create the best digital presence. Some services companies and agencies partner with Adobe to implement and maintain their customer’s infrastructure. We decided to take a look at the Adobe services partner ecosystem to understand its reach. Below are some highlights.
Adobe lists approximately 840 service partners worldwide. We cleaned up the data and excluded some duplicate partners that were acquired and were listed twice, plus other names where we could not find any public info. We ended up with 806 service partners.
The headquarters country defines the region where we listed the partner. These partners employ approximately 4.8 million team members and have 11,585 certified employees (0.2% of the total) in Adobe products, carrying 16,281 certifications (an average of 1.4 certifications per certified employee overall).
77% of partners are based in North America and Europe, matching Adobe’s revenue geographies (59% of Adobe’s revenue comes from the Americas and 26% from EMEA).
Boutique partners and agencies with less than 1,000 employees account for 84% of worldwide partners and just 2% of headcount. 456 partners have less than 100 employees (57% of the total) and employ 15,367 people (an average of 34 employees per company). There is important fragmentation in the smaller Adobe partner tiers.
At Alten Capital we invest in business services and technology services companies. Supporting successful ISVs is a proven strategy for scaling services organizations, and we enjoy connecting with companies in strong ISV ecosystems.