Allaire Finds Perfect Suitor In Macromedia

Allaire, who spoke to VARBusiness, recently about the acquisition announced earlier this month, says the merger is in many ways "symbolic" of the latest trends in Web creation. In particular, the $360 million transaction brings together the two companies' server, authoring and playback software to create an end-to-end Web development solution.

Macromedia's products include its authoring and server line, visual HTML editor Macromedia Dreamweaver and rich media producer Macromedia Flash. Allaire's arsenal includes cross-platform Web server ColdFusion and J2EE application server JRun.

"We saw that increasingly, Web sites and applications were being built by teams of Web professionals that combined both application developers and interactive professionals who were building the user experience," says Allaire. "Really effective Web sites and applications required a set of products that brought those two universes together in really interesting ways. In many respects this merger is symbolic of that trend in the creation of the web going forward."

"A major trend we saw is that applications and Web sites were becoming much more focused on user experience," says Allaire. "To build really strong and compelling user experiences, you needed both a good end-user environment as well as the ability to do dynamic content and the ability to build interactive logic into your site and applications. That's obviously something that we've been very string at with our server products."

After the merger, which has already been approved by both companies' boards and will most likely be completed in the next 90 days, Allaire will become CTO of Macromedia, reporting to Kevin Lynch, president of Macromedia products. Rob Burgess, chairman and CEO of Macromedia, will continue as chairman and CEO of the combined company.

Allaire says that among his top priorities when he steps into the role of CTO of Macromedia will be brining both companies' product teams together and educating people about Allaire's technology and what it can bring to the overall Macromedia organization.

Fortunately for Allaire, the two companies already have a proven track record when it comes to working together, with a four-year history of cooperation on a number of projects.

"Any good partnership, whether it's friends, family or work, comes from having a real relationship," says Allaire. "When they built Dreamweaver 1.0 several years ago, they came to us to include our home site product with Dreamweaver. We were really strong with coders and developers, while they were really strong with designers. They wanted to have a product that could combine those, so we worked with them to integrate those two products."

"We think there is a really unique opportunity to combine these traditionally two different worlds--the world of content and user experience and the world of applications and logic and servers. To create a new company that is able to deliver that integrated value in a way that has never been done in the history of software."