Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro

Since its wider adoption by enterprises and organizations of various sizes, Web conferencing has represented a quantum leap compared with traditional audio-only conference calls. The online meeting experience creates a new level of participant engagement by adding rich data sharing (screensharing, collaborative review of documents) and interactivity tools (chat, live surveys, etc.). Higher participant attention raises the productivity of online meetings, while the combination of live sessions and on-demand access to learning contents increases the retention rate of training sessions administered through tools like Connect Pro.

Through periodic research interviews, we have found that many Connect Pro customers would characterize our solution as "the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting". This is the result of constant innovation instilled into our product over seven releases to deliver a multi-dimensional environment.

While audio, text-based chat and data sharing are staples of web conferencing tools, video is the one dimension that has been relatively underutilized until now. Two major reasons explain this lower penetration: the slow proliferation of video devices, such as webcams, in the workplace, and the concern of systems administrators around bandwidth utilization. Another reason would be the earlier investment in room-based videoconferencing systems by corporations and the urge to use them as the primary conduit for visual communications, as a way to justify their high acquisition costs and the recurring expenses for servicing them.

From connecting rooms to connecting people

While room-based videoconferencing systems arguably provide good quality video, they have failed to do so in a scalable fashion, financially and operationally. Beyond the cost of installing and maintaining endpoints, IT/IS departments have realized that room-based systems are another complex layer to manage and to integrate with the rest of their communications infrastructure. On the other end, many corporate users often struggle with their sophisticated deployment and convoluted settings.

Leading vendors have recently touted a new generation of videoconferencing solutions, with "Telepresence", emphasizing high quality at improved compression rates. However, these systems have not overcome the barriers that limit the widespread use of video: complex combination of hardware, software and additional room equipment; price points that make them an elitist solution and the privilege of a few. Finally they still follow the same metaphor consisting in connecting rooms, not users.

A study recently published by Gartner (November 10, 2009) portends that organizations are showing increased interest in video in general, and in video systems that are not bound to a room-centered experience in particular. They are pushing harder for desktop videoconferencing that has a lower cost structure, better reach and less dependence on appliances and infrastructure.

Seeing is believing

The video streaming capabilities provided by Connect Pro make it a strong substitute to supplant these systems down the road, and a much better fit for interpersonal communications. As webcams and built-in video devices are making strong headways into corporate environments, video will become the next frontier of web conferencing systems.

Release after release, and ahead of all competing products, Connect Pro team has supported and improved live video streaming to create more lifelike web meeting experiences and foster ad-hoc collaboration. Seeing the presenters of a webinar, or the instructor conducting a training session over Connect Pro, helps make a more impactful and lasting impression on the target audience.

Built on the Adobe Flash platform, Connect Pro leverages the leading streaming technologies developed by Adobe, currently used to deliver approximately 80 percent of Web video worldwide. Adobe Flash has been designed to provide high-quality streaming, at optimized bitrates, across firewalls. Bandwidth efficiency mitigates administrators' network-related concerns while cross-firewall delivery extends video meetings to outside participants.

Mass adoption of video by enterprise customers is occurring gradually, but its pace is accelerating. It will increasingly rely on fully software-based videoconferencing solutions that offer lower-cost alternatives to legacy video systems with roughly equivalent levels of quality. With the ubiquitous Flash platform, Connect Pro possesses a foundational asset that we are leveraging as we evolve our webconferencing solution. Stay tuned for richer and more engaging interpersonal and collaborative experiences.

The Connect Pro team released today three new whitepapers addressing key topics of interest for its hosted and licensed customers. A first set of documents provide an updated security assessment for Connect Pro 7.5; another whitepaper focuses on our support for virtualized server environments.

Security - Collaborate in trust with Connect Pro

Leading organizations are increasingly using realtime collaboration tools, such as Connect Pro, to increase employee productivity and optimize their costs of doing business. While enhanced business velocity is the primary objective, systems security, data integrity and privacy protection are vital imperatives for systems administrators.

Adobe has for long acknowledged that software applications and services must be delivered in a secure and reliable fashion. As part of this commitment to transparency, Adobe released today an updated version of its security reports (one for its SaaS platform, one for its premise-based software). The new documents can be found at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/whitepapers/

Customers will find that, from design to systems deployment, Connect Pro implements best practices for software security at all stages of its engineering development and operations. All Connect Pro application components, whether delivered as a service or licensed software, go through a rigorous process of validation, conducted side-by-side by Adobe's dedicated, in-house security team and third-party security experts.

In addition to the techniques employed to ensure communications encryption and protection against security exploits, it is important to note that Connect Pro also offers leading features for compliance and control. They give systems administrators a tighter control over the functionality accessible to end-users and are useful to mitigate the risk of accidental sharing of sensitive information and ensure alignment with internal and regulatory policies. More details can be found in a tutorial published on our community website, at www.connectusers.com.

Virtualization - Optimize resources with Connect Pro

Server virtualization is becoming the norm across many data centers. The overall level of virtualization has increased steadily over the past years and is widely seen as a valuable avenue for cutting costs and improving resource utilization in the data center.

Four main reasons are driving this uptake:

1. Server consolidation and data center optimization: by consolidating several workloads on a single, partitioned server and running them each in their own VM, more efficient utilization can be achieved while still allocating sufficient resources to execute each workload. This also allows for substantial savings on data center costs and space.
2. Business continuity: the deployment and management of applications on virtualization software offers more cost-efficient options for high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery.
3. Encapsulation and isolation: by creating separate operating environments for multiple applications, virtualization technology mitigates the risk of conflict, facilitates the troubleshooting of runtime problems and achieve security isolation.
4. Dynamic utility computing: virtualization can turn previously discrete IT resources into an internal utility grid that saves energy, reduces cost and increases reliability.

To take advantage of the benefits of virtualized server architectures, Connect Pro 7.5 has been certified in a virtualized server environment running VMware ESX Server.

The new whitepaper, published at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/whitepapers/, offers benchmarks and data points about the application's performance in a virtual environment, under different configurations (single server setup, clustered three-server setup). It was found that Connect Pro performed on par with an equivalent physical installation and that the user experience was comparable.

This whitepaper also advises customers on the best way to set up and configure Acrobat Connect Pro on VMware ESX Server.

We are thrilled to announce a significant update to Acrobat Connect Pro!

Some of the new capabilities include the ability to integrate with any audio conferencing provider, allowing organizations to leverage existing investments. Telephone audio can be recorded along with a Web conference and streamed to VoIP-only meeting participants and advanced integrated audio teleconferencing capabilities include call controls, participant management and synchronized recording. In addition to Acrobat Connect Pro's existing integrations with Premiere Global, MeetingOne, Cisco, and Avaya, Adobe is releasing a new integration with InterCall, the world's largest conferencing and collaboration services provider, to offer customers the ability to deploy Acrobat Connect Pro with InterCall audio conferencing.

Increased webinar capacity will enable users to engage up to 80,000 participants in high-impact sessions that can incorporate rich media demonstrations, live and recorded video and interactivity. This new capacity will support use cases ranging from large marketing events and product launches, to global town hall meetings and effective eLearning programs.

Further enhancements to security and compliance functionality includes more secure desktop sharing that offers increased control and enables regulation compliance and new administrative tools allow customers to define which applications can be screen-shared; users can collaborate with ease without the risk of an inadvertent breach.

With this release, we are offering a new implementation model. In addition to current hosted and on-premise deployment options, Acrobat Connect Pro will be available as a managed service, offering customers the ability to outsource IT support while realizing the benefits of security and control.

Other key areas of additional functionality include: native support of PDF that offers advanced document controls and improved workflow through increased integration with Adobe Acrobat; functionality that enables users to schedule and manage Acrobat Connect Pro meetings directly from Lotus Notes; easy account migration for installed customers who wish to change deployment configurations; and certification that offers on-premise customers the ability to run Acrobat Connect Pro on VMware infrastructure. Additionally, work is currently underway on the Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile application, which will enable meeting participation from mobile devices. The first devices that Adobe is working to enable are the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

Check out the new release!

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is a forum for business and IT leaders to focus on building more agile and productive business cultures through the use of tools and technologies. Adobe is pleased to be a Gold Sponsor of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference , which is being held November 2-5, 2009. "Unlocking the business value of Enterprise 2.0" is the theme of this year's inaugural San Francisco version of the conference. In his keynote address on November 3rd, Rob Tarkoff, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Business Productivity Solutions group at Adobe Systems, will talk about the Customer-Driven Enterprise and what the future of customer interactions will look like. Adobe will also be making some exciting announcements at the show. I'll be there and hope you will too!

In addition to the keynote, Adobe has a booth in the joint VoiceCon/Enterprise 2.0 Expo Pavillion on Tuesday, November 3rd and Wednesday, November 4th from noon til 5pm. We'll have Connect Pro and Adobe Livecycle ES product experts and demo stations. Be sure to stop by booth #722 to discuss with us our solutions and to see them in action. Note -- since a good portion of the Connect Pro product team is based in San Francisco, there will be quite a few of us at the booth and attending sessions -- so be sure to come talk to us about how we can help you engage with your customers, partners and employees.

Don't miss the chance to attend the Adobe Learning Summit in San Jose this November 9th, 2009. As a long time elearning professional I'm particularly excited about our guest keynote speaker, Clay Shirky.

I recently had the honor to discuss with Mr. Shirky some of the collaborative technology topics that I believe are of interest to us as learning and collaboration professionals. In preparation for his address, we discussed impressions and questions I've heard from elearning professionals and have experienced myself. For example, we have all been talking up 'web 2.0', blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and the like for years now, and have even started to see some great examples of how these have accelerated knowledge transfer within and across groups. But how does that really apply to us as learning professionals? Should we embrace these technologies just because we hear they are the latest and greatest? How can we determine whether they might work for our purposes, and if so, where should we get started? And finally, if we do provide the tools for a more social and collaborative learning environment, how do we know the users will embrace them? Is there a way to seed the community, or drive motivation to help our communities evolve and provide valuable knowledge transfer - or more - for our organizations?

With those questions in mind, and with an extensive knowledge of and passion for learning and technology, I am certain Mr Shirky's talk will be memorable for those of us lucky enough to be there to hear him speak. Join us for this exciting keynote speech to kick off a value-packed day, created just for learning professionals at the Adobe Learning Summit.

Clay Shirky's Biography:
Clay Shirky is a writer, educator, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. In his new book, "Here Comes Everybody", Clay explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination. In this highly engaging keynote presentation, Mr. Shirky will explore these trends in light of how they impact our efforts as learning professionals.

Clay Shirky references and talks on Ted.com:
http://www.ted.com/search?q=clay+shirky&x=0&y=0