Adobe Expands Acrobat Family with New Acrobat Connect Product Line

PRESS RELEASE

New Hosted Service and On-Premise Solution Offers “Always-On” Personal Meeting Rooms

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sept. 18, 2006 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today intro­duced the Adobe® Acrobat® Connectâ„¢ 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 instant­ly con­nect online with noth­ing more than a web brows­er and the ubiq­ui­tous Flash® Player soft­ware. Together with Adobe Acrobat 8 soft­ware (see sep­a­rate release issued today), the expand­ed Acrobat fam­i­ly accel­er­ates the flow of busi­ness by allow­ing peo­ple to eas­i­ly work togeth­er in real-time.

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 per­son­al meet­ing rooms in Acrobat Connect are read­i­ly avail­able, mak­ing it easy for knowl­edge work­ers to hold spon­ta­neous, ad-hoc meet­ings, while help­ing to save time and increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. A cus­tom URL enables fast and easy-to-remember access to each user’s per­son­al meet­ing room, just like a phone num­ber or e‑mail address.

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. Because the Flash Player is installed on more than 97 per­cent of Internet-connected com­put­ers world­wide, the expe­ri­ence of join­ing an online meet­ing is hassle-free. Additionally, with one-button “Start Meeting” access from Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader® 8 soft­ware, users can also launch Acrobat Connect direct­ly from a doc­u­ment to start col­lab­o­rat­ing immediately.

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.”

Organizations can deploy Acrobat Connect Professional in either an on-premise, behind the fire­wall con­fig­u­ra­tion, or through Adobe’s host­ed ser­vice. The on-premise solu­tion pro­vides IT depart­ments with increased con­trol, and eas­es inte­gra­tion with oth­er enter­prise sys­tems while reduc­ing the over­all cost of own­er­ship. Additional solu­tions for rapid train­ing and online events are avail­able under the Adobe Connect brand, for­mer­ly known as Macromedia® Breeze® software.

The entire Acrobat fam­i­ly con­sists of Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 8 Standard, Acrobat 8 Elements, Acrobat 3D Version 8, Acrobat Connect, and Acrobat Connect Professional.

Pricing and Availability
The Acrobat Connect host­ed ser­vice is expect­ed to be avail­able in November 2006 as a free tri­al ver­sion through the end of the cal­en­dar year. The com­mer­cial release of Acrobat Connect, ini­tial­ly avail­able in English, is expect­ed to be avail­able in ear­ly 2007 for a sub­scrip­tion price of US$39/month, or US$395/year per user. Acrobat Connect Professional is expect­ed to be avail­able in December 2006. It is expect­ed to be avail­able in English, German, French, Japanese, and Korean and will be licensed on a named user, as well as con­cur­rent port basis. Existing licensed cus­tomers of the Macromedia Breeze solu­tion with up-to-date main­te­nance plans may be eli­gi­ble for updates to Acrobat Connect Professional and new ver­sions of the Adobe Connect servers. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.adobe​.com/​a​c​robat/ .

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe rev­o­lu­tion­izes how the world engages with ideas and infor­ma­tion – any­time, any­where and through any medi­um. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.adobe​.com .