Team collaboration, document security, and more inviting customer interactions are behind the latest enhancements to the mother of all PDF creators.
Adobe announced a new version of Acrobat this week that includes a feature to allow users to automatically gather data from PDF forms and save it to an Excel file. Regardless of your views on Acrobat, it clearly is here to stay, and the new data-gathering feature in Acrobat X (10) is likely to delight corporate (particularly marketing types), legal, and educational users. Acrobat X includes many new features and is a major rewrite of Acrobat 9. For anyone who creates or manages PDF files, the upgrade is likely to be at the top of their holiday wish list.
Adobe Acrobat X is actually a "software family" that includes Acrobat X, Reader X, the Acrobat X Suite, and new document exchange services at Acrobat.com. The market forces driving enhancements to Acrobat, as well as to IBM's Lotus products, are coming from several fronts. Distributed workforces scattered around the globe from North America to China and India are requiring greater collaboration—a common buzzword these days touted by both Adobe and IBM Lotus. At the same time, customers are expecting more professional, better "interaction" with companies through their online presence, and corporations are responding. The idea is to boost customer loyalty, trim costs, and improve profit margins.
The new version of Acrobat allows users to create PDF files that include rich media—audio, video, and interactive media—embedded directly into the PDF document for enhanced customer interaction. Users can merge files from multiple applications into a single PDF document, reduce PDF file size by optimizing compression and resolution, and attach native files to PDF documents. PDF Portfolios allow users to assemble a wide range of content types into a single, organized, searchable folder. Customized PDF Portfolios support layouts, visual themes, and color palettes and can even be personalized by adding corporate branding.
"Companies today need to work with their customers and partners in multiple time zones, languages, and cross-functional teams," says IDC analyst Melissa Webster. "Seamless, fluid content creation and collaboration is critical to how organizations use, repurpose, and share information; it is no longer a 'nice-to-have'; it is an imperative to success in today's business world," she says.
Acrobat has had its share of ups and downs over the years, but PDF has become a de facto document standard. Whether Adobe has managed the Acrobat product line as well as it might have is another question given the various on-again off-again operating system support decisions it has made and the scary spate of security vulnerabilities that occupied the development team's efforts in 2009. Adobe has released no fewer than 10 updates to either Adobe Reader 9 or Adobe Acrobat 9 to fix critical security vulnerabilities. By the end of last year, Adobe applications had become the most popular client software targets for attackers. McAfee predicts that Adobe software, especially Reader and Flash, will be the primary target for attacks in 2010.
Adobe, nevertheless, is well aware of the security challenges facing its customers and has committed to addressing all of them immediately upon their being identified. It also is promising to build defenses into the products that help guard against future attacks. A consortium of security companies will now be given advance notice of Adobe security updates in order to have everyone on the same page at the same time and help thwart new forms of attacks.
Despite these setbacks, new features in Acrobat X are impressive. They allow users to automate routine, multistep tasks with guided Actions, and then share them with coworkers, reducing time needed to individually learn new routines. Acrobat X changes how users view, think about, and interact with content with its PDF Portfolios with snazzy new layouts, visual themes, and colors. The new Acrobat X Suite, leveraging Adobe Photoshop, allows users to capture, edit, and combine digital content from the desktop. Acrobat is also nicely integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, though Adobe has its own repository in the cloud now at the free Acrobat.com, where users can store and share PDF files. Acrobat X is taking full advantage of the cloud, and users may soon be storing all their documents—at least their PDF files—in the cloud. When you consider the traditional hassle of trying to synchronize the files on your desktop files with those on your laptop and now perhaps even your smartphone, doesn't it more make more sense to store your documents securely online where you and your coworkers always have access to them? It certainly mitigates the problem of losing your laptop and all the critical files it may contain.
Given that IBM Power Systems servers today easily run Linux and AIX, the opportunity to run some of the Adobe enterprise solutions becomes much more feasible. With the emphasis on regulatory compliance, IT managers today are having to assume increasing levels of responsibility for protecting business processes and critical communications. With Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2, user productivity may increase as the risk to sensitive information is reduced. The application now runs on both AIX and either flavor of Linux, and it integrates with DB2. With the LifeCycle Launchpad ES2 interface, users can identify files for protection, create and set a policy to limit user access and privileges, and record every action taken on a document for audit and compliance purposes.
Adobe offers both Standard and Pro versions of Acrobat X. The free Reader X has been enhanced to perform more functions than just viewing a PDF as long as there is a licensed version of Acrobat on board. The full Acrobat X Software suite includes Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Adobe Presenter 7, Adobe Captivate 5, Adobe Media Encoder CS5, and Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES2. This is definitely a package for the power user, but as we've seen since 1993, when Acrobat 1.0 was first introduced, it's common for yesterday's extravagant and unnecessary features to become tomorrow's de facto standards.
Adobe has an exciting vision encompassing worker collaboration, document security, and customer interaction. If it could more broadly standardize and collaborate with other vendors, it might be more welcome among the broader collection of enterprises. Hopefully, Acrobat X is a step in that direction.
Adobe is offering free trials of its new Acrobat X family of products, but they're not quite ready yet. In order to register and be notified when you can download them, click here.
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