More advanced users will find a wealth of new capabilities in Acrobat Standard and Professional, include a greatly expanded set of collaboration features for adding comments and making changes to documents. Acrobat can automatically incorporate all changes into a Microsoft Word document once the review process is over and gathers all changes and comments into a single file, so the whole document doesn't have to be sent back and forth. "This is a huge nightmare for IT guys," said Jonathan Knowles, Adobe's "worldwide Acrobat evangelist". "They can't stand the fact people are sending bulky files back and forth just to add a few comments." Acrobat 6.0 also includes expanded security features for digitally signing and encrypting documents, making it more feasible for banks and other institutions to send sensitive documents electronically. The new Acrobat enhances support for adding XML functions, allowing PDF documents to become interactive forms that can exchange data with corporate databases. Adobe has initiated partnerships with SAP and other major enterprise software makers and is working on further collaborations to make PDF the preferred presentation layer for exhibiting and exchanging corporate data. "We're really starting to deliver on this whole notion of integrating the transaction system on the back end with the productivity systems of the front end," Narayen said. Laurie Orlov, an analyst at Forrester Research, said enterprise software makers have been happy to partner with Adobe because the PDF format offers an application-neutral solution to the challenge of presenting enterprise data. "None of those enterprise suite vendors have particularly flexible or easy-to-use output formats," Orlov said. "They have no issues about partnering with Adobe on output because PDF works well and it works for everyone." Acrobat Professional adds tools for creating PDF versions of complex engineering and business documents created by applications such as AutoCAD and Visio. PDF allows architects and engineers to easily exchange their work with clients and partners while retaining the complex formatting and structure common to such work. "The Professional product is really when you have information created with specialised software applications, how do exchange that information?" said Narayen. "If you have multiple people you want to share with and collaborate with, you need something everyone can access, and PDF does that." The new publishing applications will be accompanied by Adobe Reader 6.0, Adobe's free software for viewing PDF files. The new Reader includes support for viewing slide shows created with Adobe's PhotoShop Album and support for reading electronic books, formerly handled by a separate e-book application offered by Adobe. The Microsoft factor
The new Acrobat products derive much of their value from tight integration with Microsoft software, particularly the applications in the company's Office package of productivity tools. That's despite a sometimes contentious relationship with Microsoft that became a bit more tense last year when Microsoft announced InfoPath (formerly XDocs), electronic forms software widely seen as possible competition for Acrobat. Narayen said Adobe has a good record of cooperating with Microsoft in areas where it makes sense. "We work very closely with Microsoft on a number of areas," he said. "We've demonstrated that a lot of the value proposition of Acrobat is in extending the value of other desktop applications, including a number of Microsoft products. Our strategy is that we want to solve the problem of distributing information in a multiplatform world." Orlov said that while Microsoft and Adobe remain competitors in some areas, it hard to say which direction the race is going. "If Microsoft's capability gets honed more precisely in terms of Office doing all the same things as Acrobat, it could get tough for Adobe," she said. "Or it could be that Adobe extends PDF to be so inclusive of everything Microsoft is doing that that they stay one step ahead of them." "They're approaching the same problem but from different ends," Orlov added. "It all depends on whether the enterprise views this as a server-side problem, which is Adobe's approach, or a desktop opportunity, which is Microsoft's direction." All of the new Acrobat product are set to ship in mid-May. Acrobat Standard will sell for $299, or about £191, for the full product or $99 for those upgrading from a previous version of Acrobat. Acrobat Professional will sell for $449, or $149 for those upgrading from a previous version of Acrobat. Acrobat Elements will mark a further diversion from Adobe's typical focus on boxed software. The company will sell Elements only under a volume licensing program, with a minimum order of 1,000 licences at $29 per seat, unusually low for an Adobe product. Narayen said the company can make money on Elements at that price and has the sales and support staff necessary to handle high-volume enterprise deals. "We're confident it expands our reach and revenue for Acrobat," he said. AMR's Murphy wasn't so sure. He said Adobe historically hasn't profited much from Acrobat, and Elements in and of itself is unlikely to change that. "I don't think they're going to make much money from Elements," he said. "It's part of the broader strategy. If they can get more people to use something like Elements, more content will be out there in that format, and that makes more companies interested in working with PDF."
See the Software News Section for the latest headlines on everything from peer to peer clients to Office software and beyond.
Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.
