Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is stepping down and will be replaced by current COO and former Apple employee Shantanu Narayen. The changing of the guard will take place on December 1, but Mr. Chizen will remain on the the companyis board of directors through spring 2008.
Mr. Chizen has worked for Adobe for 14 years, and was CEO for the past seven. John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, co-chairmen of Adobeis Board of Directors, commented "Bruce Chizenis vision has helped transform Adobe from a company that was known mainly for its popular design products into one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world."
Mr. Shantanu joined Adobe in 1998 as vice president and general manager of Adobeis engineering technology group. He has also served as senior vice president of worldwide products, and executive vice president of worldwide product marketing and development. He co-founded the digital image sharing software company Pictra, and also held senior positions at Silicon Graphics and Apple.
Adobe is well known for its professional design applications including Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. The company also created Acrobat and the industry standard PDF document format along with the PostScript printer language.