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Adobe Adds Acrobat Connect Software

Adobe Systems Inc. has introduced Adobe Acrobat Connect software product line, the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer ‘always-on’ personal meeting rooms. The product line, consisting of Adobe Acrobat Connect and Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, enables knowledge workers to connect online with nothing more than a web browser and the Flash Player software.

The new, extended Acrobat family brings together the two critical components of knowledge work, documents and people. The Acrobat 8 product line offers knowledge workers a complete PDF document solution; and the Acrobat Connect product line brings real-time, interactive web conferencing and collaboration within the reach of everyone.

“We believe web collaboration needs to be as easy as sending and viewing a PDF document, so anyone can reap the benefits of meeting online in real-time,” said Tom Hale, senior vice president, Knowledge Worker Business Unit, Adobe. “Since nearly everyone already has the Flash Player installed, Acrobat Connect makes it extremely easy to go from looking at your computer screen to sharing it with others, regardless of their platform or version of software.”

Unlike traditional web conferencing solutions, Acrobat Connect enables users to choose a simple and easy-to-remember web address for their online personal meeting room, with unlimited usage for up to 15 participants for one low monthly fee.

The Acrobat Connect hosted service provides users with essential collaboration tools, such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, chat, video conferencing, and audio conferencing. Acrobat Connect enables anyone with a Flash software-enabled web browser to join a web meeting without having to download cumbersome software.

For online meetings with multiple presenters, online events, and live virtual classrooms, Acrobat Connect Professional provides power users and larger organizations with a full-featured web conferencing solution. Beyond the baseline functionality of Acrobat Connect, Acrobat Connect Professional offers a rich set of collaboration tools. These include support for large meetings, reporting, content management, extensive user and meeting management capabilities, support for interactive multimedia, integrated telephony, and Voice over Internet Protocol. In addition, developers can use the Acrobat Connect Collaboration Builder SDK to create custom interactive applications such as engaging learning games and simulations.

"Casual web conferencing users have different needs than intensive users," said Jeffrey Mann, Research Vice President for Gartner, Inc. "Lightweight collaboration requires easy-to-use tools in order to spread throughout an organization. Users participating in processes which require intensive use of collaborative functionality need more capabilities. Catering for both use cases will increase flexibility and enable richer interactions."


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