Why continuous deployment may cause continuous customer dissatisfaction
Why continuous deployment may cause continuous customer dissatisfaction
EN/US
Steve Blank gave example of Adobe in his blog post, which has now moved all products to the cloud and labeled them the Adobe Creative Cloud. Instead of paying for new products, customers now buy an annual subscription. It is good from the perspective of getting predictable annuity but not good from consumers’ perspective.
He described Adobe’s problem in using continuous deployment as follows:
While creating a predictable revenue stream from high-end users, Adobe has created two problems. First, not all Adobe customers believe that Adobe’s new subscription business model is an improvement for them. If customers stop paying their monthly subscription they don’t just lose access to the Adobe Creative Suite software used to create their work, they may lose access to the work they created.
Second, they unintentionally overshot the needs of students, small business and casual users, driving them to good-enough replacements like GIMP for PhotoShop and Artboard for Illustrator.
The consequence of discarding low margin customers and optimizing revenue and margin in the short-term, Adobe risks enabling future competitors.
CN
引用Steve Blank 在他的博文 里举的Adobe的例子，Adobe现在把整个产品线迁移到了云端，称之为 Adobe Creative Cloud。用户不再需要为新产品付钱，而是支付每年的订阅费用。这种做法使公司的年收入更趋向于稳定，但是从消费者的角度来讲，却是不好的。
他描述了 Adobe 在运用持续部署过程中遇到的问题：
虽然持续部署让 Adobe 从高端用户身上不断获得稳定的年收入，但是他们也制造了两个问题。首先，不是所有客户都相信 Adobe 新的订阅式商业模式能给自己带来好处。如果客户停止支付每月的订阅费用，那他们不但会失去工作所依赖的 Adobe Creative Suite 软件，同时还可能无法访问已经完成的作品。
其次，Adobe 这种定位过高的策略无意中伤害了要求比较低的学生、小公司和轻度个人用户，把他们送到了优秀竞争对手的怀抱，比如用GIMP 替代 PhotoShop，用 Artboard 替代 Illustrator。
抛弃低价值客户、增加年收入和短期利润的结果就是，Adobe 培养了未来的竞争对手。
其实同样的例子还有很多，比如MS Office -> Office 365.
