ColdFusion Sales Are Up Up UP!!!

Macromedia has posted Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2005 Results. Betsey Nelson (EVP and CFO) discussed "nice strong performance ... including Flex and ColdFusion", but did not go into product by product specifics. We've been telling you for a while now that ColdFusion is doing very well, and I have been dying to share specifics but have been unable to do so. Until now, that is. So, here goes ...

We just posted the best ColdFusion quarter in the past 4 years.
Revenues generated from ColdFusion were up 45% quarter/quarter and up 30% Q4-05/Q4-04.
As we expected, upgrades were very strong, but in addition new full units were also up 20% quarter/quarter.
We booked a multi-million dollar ColdFusion deal, the largest single in the history of the product!
Over 14,000 units of ColdFusion MX 7 are now in the hands of customers around the world. (This includes new units, upgrades, and delivery of ColdFusion MX 7 to active subscription holders).
Looking at the overall year, ColdFusion product sales grew 20% year/year.
And most importantly, new full unit sales increased by 11% year/year showing solid growth in the ColdFusion business.

 This information should be posted somewhere on the Macromedia site shortly, I'll let you know when this occurs!

7 Comments

Steve Scott May 3, 2005

I wonder how sales in South hemisphere are faring. US software is traditionally seen as expensive, especially application server software. I'm interested in seeing if there is any general disparity between areas such as Europe, N. America, and Japan, versus Latin America, Indonesia, Africa. I'm real glad I can download the Developer edition for free, it is a masterstroke. However, local web providers (in Malaysia) are still providing Coldfusion 5 support only. I think there's only one using CFMX, which suggests a cost hindrance.

John Farrar May 3, 2005

It should be interesting to see how big the jump for "Adobe Coldfusion" is in the first quarter. Macromedia is a great business name. Yet, Adobe deals with market sectors that will (or should) expand the market reach. It should be an amazing year for CF as this comes to pass!

barry.b May 3, 2005

any chance seeing the growth per region - esp Australia + New Zealand? Global figures are OK but I just want to see what the trend is in my neck of the woods. thanx barry.b

Giampaolo Bellavite May 4, 2005

This is a good news. But we need to be ensured that such news will increase the Macromedia attention to ColdFusion developers. This means: plans for a CFML centric IDE (we really need it!), plans for new releases, plans from Adobe trust in Coldfusion, plans for JRun future. We need to know! While Microsoft, PHP, Java are growing, the Adobe acquisition CANNOT BE seen as a danger for ColdFusion, as it is now. Please, ask Macromedia to make more good marketing for ColdFusion. I'm sure you've read a lot of discussions on this argument, we hope Macromedia knows what means the future for ColdFusion, if it is seen as "risky", directly from the ColdFusion developers.

Ryan May 4, 2005

Steve, You do make a good point about CFMX 6 & 7 support in some of the less afluent countries. A few thoughts: 1) request it of them, and don't settle for 'later'. Tell them that if they want your business you want 7 2) 7 may take a bit of time to hit since some of them will need to test it inhouse before rolling out 3) if hosting costs on a per month basis aren't radically more expensive in 'western' countries, maybe you should consider hosting elsewhere. I suggest analyzing your logs or user base first. If the majority of your traffic comes from another continent you may find better performance and less lag time if you host physically closer to the customer anyway 4) maybe your ISP will let you sublease rack space and you could buy & install CFMX 7 Enterprise. You could then resell hosting to others in your neck of the woods and maybe your ISP will send customers your way who aren't happy with 5. You charge a premium, they send you customers, and they slowly ween themselves from hosting directly.

tony petruzzi May 4, 2005

John has a point there. I'm very interested to see what the marketing machine of Adobe can do for CF. You never know, this CF might actually become bigger then .Net with Adobe pushing it. Come on job security! :)

Jack London May 4, 2005

CF is now ok but without a real future plan for Open Source strategies, there would be some dangers. Just look to Sun and their plans for Java ...

7 Comments

Leave a Comment