Document management software provider Adobe has released a suite of software and services that it hopes will transform the Acrobat document creation tool into a platform for collaboration and communication between workers.
The company today announced a public beta testing scheme for Acrobat.com, a suite of hosted software tools that are designed to help people work on documents collaboratively.
These include a web-based word processor, a web-conferencing tool, online file sharing and a selection of application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow developers to integrate and enhance the platform.
“Fifteen years ago, PDF [printable document format] moved the world from paper to electronic documents without sacrificing print quality, changing the way we share information,” said Rob Tarkoff, of Adobe’s business productivity unit.
“Acrobat.com extends that vision, moving the world from email attachments to online collaborative documents without sacrificing authoring quality,” he continued.
Adobe has succeeded in making the aforementioned PDF a ubiquitous feature of document creation and management, but has had less success in turning that into money.
The company sees in ‘cloud computing’ an opportunity to play a greater role in the business software industry.
Its AIR development platform allows software developers to build applications that execute ‘in the cloud’ – i.e. on remote servers delivered over the Internet – but that look and function like desktop tools.
Further reading
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