Adobe Connect Blog

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.

By Vincent Toesca

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!