Adobe has finally fixed the trouble it's had with ID failure, which was causing many of its services to be offline since Wednesday evening. These services included the Creative Cloud subscription plan which allows users to access Adobe's popular suite of creative applications. "We have restored Adobe login services and all services are now online. We will be sharing a complete update on the outage soon," the company Tweeted yesterday evening. Adobe tacked on an apology of sorts; "We know we let you down. We apologize and are working to ensure it doesn’t happen again."
The company's software and services were hit by a log-in problem, with many subscribers finding they were unable to sign in to any Adobe services for a period stretching over 24 hours. Having worked in the publishing and printing industry, with very tight deadlines on artwork, I can imagine the turmoil and gnashing of teeth that this cloud outage must have caused.
The Creative Cloud online service was launched in 2013 and controls access to many design and development tools including Photoshop, Illustrator, Typekit, InDesign and related resources, upon which many designers worldwide depend, to earn their daily bread. When users tried to access the software during the down time, they got a message from Adobe stating "We're currently investigating an issue affecting users trying to sign in to Creative Cloud services. We'll update again when we know more."
Whilst it was possible for some users to work on Creative Cloud apps that were already downloaded previously to the local hard drive, many services which required communication with the cloud were not accessible as these applications oblige users to verify their subscription. Other non-design services such as Adobe Business Catalyst also went down during the lockout.
Although the root cause for the failure seems to be related to the Adobe ID system, Adobe has yet to release a full statement regarding how and why the outage happened. The company stopped offering standalone versions of the Creative Suite last year, a move many users criticised as it forces those who wish to upgrade to the newest versions to purchase a subscription plan. A scenario like this is definitely not doing Adobe any favours, especially when customers are already complaining about the idea of software which stops working when they stop paying.
Did the outage affect you at all? Let us know what your thoughts are on how Adobe handled the whole situation in the comments below. (While I only work for a small proportion of my time on print design now, I have bought all of the Serif design software tools to try and transition away from Adobe's offerings.)
