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Adobe Releases Acrobat 8, Targets Collaboration

Adobe continues to push its flagship PDF product beyond simply creating portable documents. With the release of Acrobat 8, the company takes aim at the document management and collaboration space.

Adobe PR representative, Kevin Lynch likens it to the old adage “are you in the train business, or you are in the transportation business?” Adobe, with the release of Acrobat 8, is clearly in the transportation business.

Coming to the party with different sectors of the business world that include Crate and Barrel, the Wharton school and the IRS, Adobe is showing that its new tools, are helping to eliminate paperwork across industry.

Along with a bevy of other features, Acrobat 8 now includes integration with Acrobat Connect — Adobe’s first major leveraging of their recent purchase of Macromedia’s Flash platform and a clever rebranding and expansion of the previous Macromedia Breeze web conferencing platform.

Adobe described Acrobat Connect as “the next generation of web conferencing software that enables professionals to instantly communicate and collaborate through easy-to-use, easy-to-access online personal meeting rooms.”

Going beyond document creation, this “Web 2.0” collaboration tool allows groups to collaborate with each other, not just on document creation, but also on many other collaborative, team-oriented initiatives.

With the Acrobat 8, users can use the Start Meeting button to collaborate in real-time with the document ownership team. A free trial of Acrobat Connect is available here. The basic service will run you US$ 39 per month for up to a 15 person team.

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