Key points
- And the seat count is where the money was all along: on a 1,000-seat ETLA, if 15 percent of all-apps seats are idle and another 20 percent only ever open one app, reclaiming and right-profiling them reshapes the base by hundreds of thousands before Adobe even quotes the uplift.
The two kinds of waste hiding in the seat count
There are two distinct leaks in most Adobe estates, and they need different fixes. The first is inactive waste: all-apps licences assigned to people who have not opened the software in months. That is the difference between seats you hold and seats anyone uses, and every one of them is a full price renewal for nothing. The second is over-profiling: people on the full all-apps licence who only ever touch Acrobat, or a single Creative Cloud app. Right-profiling them to the single-app licence they actually need captures the gap between the all-apps cost and the single-app one, at no loss of capability to the user.
Separating the two matters because they are recovered differently. Inactive seats are simply reclaimed, removed from the count before you renew. Over-profiled seats are downgraded to the right licence. The playbook prices both from your own usage: the reclaim from idle seats, and the right-profiling saving from moving each over-licensed user to the profile that matches their actual work. Together they reshape the base you are renewing before Adobe ever quotes an uplift on it.
app.isvcosell.com/tooling/adobe-etla
The two leaks separated: idle seats to reclaim and over-profiled all-apps licences to right-profile, both priced from real usage.
THE SAME JOB, TWICE
TODAY, BY HAND
The ETLA renewal arrives as one number with a polite uplift, and a licensing manager starts negotiating that number down a few points.
Someone requests a usage report from the Adobe admin console and IT, then reconciles it against the seat list in Excel to guess how many all-apps licences are actually used.
The generative AI bundle rides in folded into the total, and nobody prices it as its own decision.
The ETLA versus VIP question is settled by gut feel, because nobody has time to price a real VIP alternative before the deadline.
Two to three weeks of reconciliation, and the seat waste renews anyway
WITH ISVCOSELL
Open the Adobe ETLA playbook: idle seats are flagged for reclaim and over-profiled all-apps licences are flagged for right-profiling, both priced from your real usage.
Build the target as ordered transforms on the reshaped base, reclaim, right-profile, cap the uplift, so the waterfall from Adobe's ask to your number reconciles by construction.
Unbundle the generative AI line and size it to measured intent instead of accepting it inside the total.
Read the ETLA-versus-VIP verdict and take the priced VIP walk away into the room, timed to Adobe's late-November fiscal close.
About an hour to a reconciled target and a priced walk away
What changes: weeks of seat-count reconciliation become an hour to a target that traces every dollar to a specific move. And the seat count is where the money was all along: on a 1,000-seat ETLA, if 15 percent of all-apps seats are idle and another 20 percent only ever open one app, reclaiming and right-profiling them reshapes the base by hundreds of thousands before Adobe even quotes the uplift.
PART TWO
The uplift, the AI bundle, and the target
With the base reshaped, the ask comes into focus. Adobe's number is typically the prior base grown by an uplift, plus the new generative AI bundle presented as a natural addition. The playbook decomposes it, so you can see the uplift and the bundle as separate decisions rather than one total to accept, and builds a target through a sequence of transforms: reclaim the idle seats, right-profile the over-licensed, cap the uplift, and apply only the repricing that is justified. Because the target is built as ordered steps on the real base, the waterfall from Adobe's ask to your target reconciles by construction, and every number in it traces to a specific move.
The generative AI bundle deserves its own scrutiny rather than a reflexive yes or no. Like any consumption-flavoured add-on, it should be sized to measured intent, not bought because it came attached to the renewal. Seen as a distinct line rather than folded into the total, it becomes a decision you make on evidence, which is exactly the framing Adobe would prefer you did not apply.
"The Adobe discount is a distraction. The money is in the all-apps licences sitting on people who only ever open Acrobat."
PART THREE
ETLA or VIP, and the walk away that decides it
Underneath the renewal sits a structural question: should you be on an ETLA at all, or on VIP, the more flexible marketplace-based buying program? The playbook reads your signals, scale, the value of true-up flexibility, how predictable your seat count is, and returns a verdict rather than leaving it a vibe. For some estates the ETLA's commitment is worth the discount; for others the flexibility of VIP is worth more than the term rate, and the honest answer is to move.
What makes either conversation real is the walk away, and Adobe's own model hands it to you. Because these are subscriptions with no perpetual fallback, the software simply stops at expiry, which sounds like leverage for Adobe and is actually the opposite: it means a priced VIP quote is a genuine, immediate alternative you can put on the table, not a theoretical one. Time that alternative to Adobe's fiscal year-end in late November, when the reps are closing their number, and the walk away carries its most weight. The ETLA versus VIP decision stops being Adobe's to frame and becomes yours to price.
app.isvcosell.com/tooling/adobe-etla
The ETLA-versus-VIP verdict, with a priced VIP walk away timed to Adobe's late-November fiscal close for maximum weight.
THE ADOBE MOVES
Before you sign the ETLA renewal
1 Reclaim the idle. Remove all-apps seats nobody uses from the base before you renew. Every idle seat is a full-price renewal for nothing.
2 Right-profile the rest. Move users who only touch one app off all-apps to single-app, capturing the gap at no loss of capability.
3 Unbundle the AI. Treat the generative AI bundle as its own decision, sized to measured intent, not accepted because it rode in on the total.
4 Price the VIP walk away. Because subscriptions stop at expiry, a VIP Marketplace quote is a real alternative. Time it to Adobe's late-November close.
THE HONEST LIMIT
Reclaim is a decision, not a spreadsheet
The playbook prices the waste, but a seat flagged as idle is a candidate for reclaim, not an automatic cut. Some low-usage seats are seasonal, some belong to people who will need the software next quarter, and right-profiling has to respect the occasional legitimate all-apps user. The numbers tell you where to look and what it is worth. The judgment about which seats to actually reclaim stays with the people who know the teams.
What it removes is the default that costs the most, which is renewing the estate you have without ever counting it. Reshape the base first, unbundle the add-ons, and bring a priced VIP alternative to Adobe's year-end, and an ETLA renewal that would have been a few points off an inflated total becomes a materially smaller, right-sized commitment. The discount was never the game. The seat count always was.
About the author
Morten Andersen, Cofounder, ISVCOSELL
Morten brings two decades of enterprise and software procurement, with stints across Oracle, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce shaping how he reads a deal. He has led sourcing through hundreds of renewals, from mid market order forms to nine figure global agreements, and learned that the buyers who win are the ones who walk in knowing the market. He built ISVCOSELL to make that pattern recognition repeatable.
More posts by Morten Connect on LinkedIn →
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