Adobe Systems (NSDQ:ADBE) is discontinuing the boxed version of its flagship Creative Suite application set and will only continue developing its cloud-based Creative Cloud applications. Adobe’s channel chief, in an interview with CRN, said the vendor’s 20,000 partners worldwide would play “an absolutely critical role” in helping customers migrate to Creative Cloud. “Our channel partners are going to be as important as ever as we migrate our customers to the cloud,” said Stephen Snyder, Adobe vice president of worldwide channel sales. “Now we’ve got to lead [partners] to where they get all of their revenue from the cloud.” Adobe will continue to sell Creative Suite 6, the current packaged version of the product, “for the foreseeable future,” Snyder said. But that will be the last packaged release, with no enhancements or new functionality offered. All future development efforts will be focused on the subscription-based Creative Cloud, which was launched one year ago. “If you want thelatest and greatest features from this point moving forward, you’re going to have to be in the cloud,” Snyder said. “We want to get all of our customers onto the cloud as quickly as possible.” Adobe is counting on partners to help customers make that move and about 50 percent of Adobe partners are already working with Creative Cloud, according to Snyder. Snyder said the unit sales split for partners is now about 20 percent for cloud-based products and 80 percent for on-premises software. Adobe’s moves are in-sync with the direction being taken by Zones.com, a national seller of IT hardware and software, and its customers, said Steve Gagliano, Zones.com vice president of partners and product marketing for software, in an interview. “We’re getting more and more customer adoption of the cloud,” he said, noting that customers are looking for the ease-of-use that goes with cloud computing. While only about 5 percent of Zons.com’s software sales are cloud, Gagliano said it’s growing at a