With Microsoft nipping at its heels in the
network publishing space, Adobe Monday said it would push its
heralded Acrobat product line to the enterprise market.
The San Jose, Calif.-based firm said the Adobe Document Server and Adobe
Document Server for Reader Extensions are the latest server-side tools being
marketed to clients looking to integrate enterprise applications with
document workflows.
Coming on the heels of Microsoft’s entrance into the
fray with its XDocs addition to the Office 11 suite, Adobe is clearly
moving to get a head start on the Redmond-based software behemoth.
Microsoft’s XDocs, which is due for shipping in the middle of 2003, is aimed
squarely at the market dominated by the likes of Adobe and Macromedia
. When Microsoft unveiled XDocs, it was styled as a new
XML-based application to allow businesses to create forms and then integrate
the information into their business processes.
Not much is known about how Microsoft plans to position and market XDocs
within the all-new Office 11 suite but Adobe has wasted no time pushing its
own alternative to enterprise clients.
Adobe believes the server products, priced at $20,000 per CPU, would combine
nicely with nearly half-a-billion copies of the free Acrobat Reader to give
companies a platform to collaborate with their customers and partners via
secured documents in online and offline environments.
“Adobe Document Server lets customers dynamically assemble customized Adobe
PDF files from a variety of data sources to create documents such as
technical manuals, electronic forms, contracts, business reports and
invoices,” the company said.
The Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions lets business clients assign
usage rights to PDF documents and forms. Once rights have been assigned,
users of the free Adobe Acrobat Reader would be able to save, fill and route
PDF forms, add electronic sticky notes for comments or questions, and
digitally sign completed forms.
Adobe had previously made these features only available with the full Adobe
Acrobat 5.0 software. Now, by taking Acrobat server-side, companies and
government agencies can now integrate completed Adobe PDF forms and data in
XML with back-end systems for round-trip transactional workflows.
It said the software would let enterprises to tap into existing ERP, CRM and
CMS systems, document management systems and databases to generate business
communications in PDF format.
“Adobe Document Server also accepts XML commands, and supports Extensible
Style Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO), an industry standard for
describing how an XML document should be formatted for a variety of media,”
the company explained.
