Adobe Systems, now the owner of Flash multimedia technology, seems to be getting pretty serious about spreading its tentacles into new product categories – from VoIP to peer-to-peer networking. But it is P2P that is at the heart of San Jose, Calif.-based company’s grand design.
In pursuit of this strategy, the company has acquired amicima, a privately held start-up founded in 2004 to “develop improved Internet protocols for client-server and peer-to-peer networking, and to develop new applications based on these protocols.” After being tipped off by one of our readers, we were able to confirm with our sources that Adobe has bought out this tiny company, which can help Adobe achieve its VoIP and P2P ambitions. An Adobe spokesperson declined to comment.
Amicima’s publicly available product is amiciPhone, a p2p-based VoIP client that combines presence, text messaging and file transfers with voice chat. In addition, Adobe recently announced a partnership with VeriSign, which is now in the CDN business. Together, expect a lot of Flash and P2P going forward, perhaps making it a lot easier to move rich content around the Internet.
Though a pint-sized start-up, amicima carried a hefty intellectual punch. Through LinkedIn, we were able to find that amicima co-founder Mathew Kaufman has been working as Senior Computer Scientist for Adobe since October 2006. His co-founder, Michael Thornburgh, is also said to be at Adobe. Both of them have vast experience in networking and P2P technologies. The two of them worked at Tycho Networks, and later at DSL.net, after that company acquired Tycho.
It is unclear whether Adobe acquired amicima for the technology or for the talent. What is clear is that the company is very serious about making the Flash technology an integral part of the “webization of voice,” as we had previously reported.
Amicima’s acquisition, while seemingly voice-centric, could also be viewed as part of company’s multi-pronged P2P strategy. Adobe recently announced a partnership with VeriSign, owners of the Kontiki grid content distribution platform. In an email earlier this month, VeriSign told us, “[we] will be collaborating with Adobe for delivery of Flash video including movies, TV shows, broadcast media and user interface technologies.”
Later, at the CES Show in Las Vegas, the two companies announced their alliance, though it was lost amidst the noise around new phones and gadgets.
The two companies expect to work together to integrate future versions of next generation media technologies leveraging VeriSign’s Kontiki peer-to-peer technology and Adobe’s award winning Flash Video software.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that Adobe could bundle Kontiki’s command-and-control P2P technology into a forthcoming version of Flash. Given the wide scale adoption of Flash, Adobe-Kontiki will be able to create an Internet-wide peer-to-peer cloud.
Publishers are expected to be able to lower their development, quality assurance, and customer support costs because the combined Flash/VeriSign service reduces the problems of deploying video on-demand applications across multiple platforms and browsers.
In other words, the two companies can make it easy to seed and distribute video content, as long as it is published to the Kontiki platform and uses Flash. The Adobe-VeriSign combo could also help overcome some of the issues surrounding the current torrent-based content distribution systems.
There are fears that a coming balkanization of BitTorrent resulting from increased commercial efforts will thwart it from becoming a widely adopted distribution platform. And more and more ISPs are increasingly blocking torrent-based content. Kontiki, however, monitors the flow of pieces of content around a network, and should be able to avoid that backlash. This is a way for P2P to really — really — go mainstream.
We will be tracking this story pretty closely, rustling up more details from our sources.
21 comments so far
5:54 AM PT
Adobe has the most powerful internet distribution power (via its existing installation base) next only to Microsoft.
They can install anything they wish in a person’s pc by bundling with a flash/acrobat upgrade or something!…
6:43 AM PT
It will be fascinating to watch this space in general, and Adobe specifically. I think Adobe has a tough path against more nimble, specialized competitors, but the ubiquity of Flash is certainly an awesome asset to try to leverage. Posted more thoughts this morning on my blog as well.
6:48 AM PT
Malik: Adobe, P2P…
Malik: Adobe, P2P: Om Malik writes “Adobe and its P2P Ambitions” today. The second paragraph bases the story on “After being tipped off by one of our readers, we were able to confirm with our sources”, but further down he does cite two verifiable i…
7:56 AM PT
Adobe and its P2P Ambitions: It’s About F*cking Time…
Om Malik riffs on Adobe’s purchase of amicma, and suggests some new aspirations for the Flash technology giant: [from Adobe and its P2P Ambitions] In pursuit of this strategy, the company has acquired amicima, a privately held start-up founded in…
8:00 AM PT
You published a very good blog.I came to know Adobe has the most powerful internet distribution power
9:27 AM PT
Good article… haven’t spotted that news anywhere else. Kontiki is a pretty nice app from the implementations of it that I’ve studied.
Flash plus Kontiki would be an interesting mix but do people really want an app sitting in their system tray communicating with the outside world just to watch a YouTube video?
9:46 AM PT
Interesting.. how do they plan to monetize the p2p cloud?
Could it be that this fits well with their desktop strategy (apollo), and potentially will allow them to have their own (non-sorensen) codecs? I see this going more into the desktop to server route rather than the p2p route..
10:03 AM PT
Abode would be smart to include a p2p client in flash for example .The problem with most commercial p2p rollouts at the moment is they dont have widespread distribution.
Travis @ Red Swoosh was brainstorming this a while back
http://www.redswoosh.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=33&page=1#Item_0
You Tube would be a perfect candidate for this and Google is investing in p2p also .
2:56 PM PT
Your last paragraph nailed it on the head. In order for long-term viability for p2p, appeasing ISPs/providers is absolutely necessary. The economical model has to evolve to one where there is some revenue share between those that use the pipes via p2p and those pipe owners. Short of that will guarrantee rate limiting of p2p by the pipe owners. And those short-term solutions like encryption of packets are just that, very short-termed bandaids that will fall off.
7:19 PM PT
Interesting article, but this left me scratching my head:
“There are fears that a coming balkanization of BitTorrent resulting from increased commercial efforts will thwart it from becoming a widely adopted distribution platform”
BitTorrent is not a widely adopted distribution platform already?
11:38 PM PT
You’ve got to be kidding me Om. . . .
This says it all
http://newteevee.com/2007/01/08/verisign-to-push-flash-through-cdn/
Verisign is announcing deals that Kontiki announced years ago. . .and all of those deals are actually non-deals, except of course the OMN deal, which is Mike Homer’s non-profit (Mike Homer was CEO/Founder of Kontiki). . .
Om, don’t be such a dumbass
12:08 AM PT
Zack,
It is actually in the interest of the telco’s to get on the p2p bandwagon because each bit of data they send and receive has a cost to it and that cost gets greater the more it has to switch between networks and the farther distance it has to travel. i posted on it on my blog which you can view by clicking my name above. Long story short, it may turn out that peering evolves to an edge technology as oppoosed to where is is today at the core.
12:23 PM PT
2007: a p2p éve…
P2p alatt most nem a filecserélő alkalmazásokat értem - bár nyilván idén is egyre többen fognak torrentezni -, hanem magát a peer-to-peer technológiát. Röviden az újszülötteknek: klasszikus adatforgalom: a szerver küldi az adatot a klie…
7:33 AM PT
Everybody’s focus is on what is Adobe going to do with the p2p technology that it got hold of by acquiring Amicima.
Amicima’s Libraries were? Open Source! (now not sure!)
I went to the http://www.amicima.com sometime back and wanted to download and play with it! and BAM! I can’t download, the link existed but said 404!!!
Now, it re-directs to the Adobe.com (http://www.adobe.com/special/amicima/)
So My question is will the library continue to be Open Source???? Can a Open Source become Close Source? Or Adobe is going to release the source?
Any thoughts on this?
6:12 PM PT
[...] 原文：http://gigaom.com/2007/01/24/adobe-and-its-p2p-ambitions/ Do not removed. 翻译：http://www.awflasher.com/blog/archives/813 - 转载请保留。 [...]
6:14 PM PT
There is a Chinese version :)
6:16 PM PT
http://www.awflasher.com/blog/archives/813
Here is the Chinese version of this topic :)
1:48 PM PT
Real-time services: Changing the basis of competition
In our earlier article we began to muse about some of the problems and opportunities for offering security-based products and services in the communications value chain. In particular, the challenge is to go from trusted computing technologies to confi…
11:42 AM PT
[...] as reported by Om Malik over on GigaOM, Adobe seems to be caught betwixt & between: “Adobe Systems, now the owner of Flash [...]
10:13 PM PT
Do the Adobe 30 day trials still work?
3:00 PM PT
Great post, thanks
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