SOFTWARE
TONY WALTHAM
Adobe Systems has made significant enhancements to its Acrobat PDF family of products with the release of Adobe Acrobat 9 and enters the realm of cloud computing with the public beta launch of Acrobat.com - taking collaboration "one step further," according to Adobe's Southeast Asia managing director Ashley Wearne.
Speaking after a product launch here last week, Wearne and Adobe technical solutions group senior consultant Tony Lim outlined new features in the software that sets the portable document format (PDF) standard and which now has native support for Adobe Flash technology.
Acrobat 9 also now offers the ability to unify a wide range of content in rich PDF Portfolios and provides access to real-time capabilities for co-navigating a PDF document with colleagues.
It provides deep support for Adobe Flash technology, enabling users to include Flash compatible video and application files in PDF documents and Acrobat 9 also provides the ability to unify a wide range of content into a single document with the new concept of PDF Portfolios.
Portfolios enable business professionals to assemble multiple media types, such as documents, video, audio, and even 3D objects, into one compressed PDF file. Users can then choose from several professional layouts - or create their own - to quickly integrate content, define navigation, and add polish and branding.
These templates allow a company or individual to customise the appearance, adding corporate branding or a logo, along with providing a welcome page to explain the contents. They may also provide descriptions of the files and even add narration or audio to, say, a PowerPoint presentation.
Acrobat 9, which comes in versions for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, also provides access to capabilities for real-time collaboration within a PDF document which is enabled by working with Acrobat.com. This is a new suite of free hosted services that Adobe introduced as public beta earlier this month.
Wearne also said Adobe was looking at getting closer to its customers here.
"We're a product company. In the region, we're probably a little too far away from the customer and were a little too focussed on getting the product to users," he said, adding that "this works Ok when you've got something like Creative Suite that has been well-known in the market for a while. But for our newer technologies we're looking at getting a little closer to the customer."
Taking up the post of managing director of Adobe Southeast Asia two months ago, Wearne said he was now looking to get more focussed partners here "who we will be investing in more strongly, servicing directly and... we need those guys to be talking to the customers in Thai." He added that "with Acrobat I think we're going to rework the partners. We have two or three, very good partners, but I think we're going to expand that a bit more."
Another product where Adobe is now looking for reference sites here is LiveCycle, an enterprise suite for which there were 10 modules. This is now represented here by one dedicated partner.
Acrobat.com is a set of online services - file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor and web conferencing - that use PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies to deliver engaging online experiences that go beyond traditional office productivity tools.
Playing in a space dominated by Google (Google Applications) and Microsoft (Microsoft Live), Adobe's hosted services include Adobe Buzzword, a Web-based word processor that can be used to easily co-author and share documents for comment and review; Adobe ConnectNow, a personal web conferencing service that includes desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat; centralised online file sharing with access controls, online PDF conversion for up to five documents and support for web-embeddable documents as well as developer APIs for real-time collaboration, file sharing and conversion.
Acrobat 9 users can also access Acrobat.com for storing and sharing files with up to 5GB of free storage or use it as a central location for collecting data as part of a forms process, and to gather comments in a shared document review.
At Acrobat.com users can also convert up to five documents to PDF online and participate in electronic forms and shared reviews initiated by Acrobat 9 users.
Adobe has also announced that Acrobat 9 will be integrated into Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium and Standard editions, Creative Suite 3.3 Web Premium and Creative Suite 3.3 Master Collection editions, to ship next month.
Acrobat 9 will sell for 10,897 baht (the upgrade is 3,604 baht), Acrobat 9 Professional is 16,388 baht (the upgrade costs 5,792 baht) and Acrobat Pro Extended is 25,483 baht (the upgrade costs 8,366 baht).
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