Adobe names Narayen CEO

Adobe said Monday that chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen will become the company's CEO effective Dec. 1.

Narayen will replace Adobe's current CEO Bruce Chizen, who has been at the helm for the last seven years. Chizen will stay on Adobe's board of directors through the spring of 2008.

In addition, Adobe said in a statement that it will hit the high end of its fourth quarter revenue range of $860 million to $890 million. The company is targeting annual revenue growth of 13 percent. According to Thomson Financial, analysts were expecting revenue of $885 million for the fiscal fourth quarter.

Simply put, Narayen is inheriting a company that is firing on all cylinders so if Adobe (all resources) was going to make a swap now is the time to do it. Adobe is in the middle of a product refresh cycle with Creative Suite 3 and has a promising future with standards such as PDF and Flash. Narayen has had an impact on all of those products since he ran Adobe's day-to-day operations, strategy, R&D and sales.