Adobe Connect Blog

From the Developer: Mike Kollen, CTO/Architect, eSyncTraining

The Internet and mobile technologies have made it easier than ever for businesses to identify and work with the best people for the job, no matter where they are. But in the legal industry, issues such as information security, ongoing collaboration, and trust often still lead to an emphasis on more face-to-face communication. Whether meeting with clients or opposing counsel, many attorneys will travel across the city or even across the globe to meet in person. Legal professionals are understandably looking for ways to bring the benefits of online collaboration into their work without sacrificing personal, secure interactions.

Face-to-face meetings come with many challenges, ranging from high costs to delays to difficulty coordinating schedules. For example, time spent traveling is simply wasted for any attorney or other legal professional who closely tracks the time spent on cases. Finding a way to effectively eliminate travel would be a big step towards reducing costs and enabling legal teams to focus their time on more productive activities for their firms and clients. Fortunately, a wider range of proven online meeting technologies are available today, offering enhanced security and the tools to collaborate smoothly.

As an example, take Veritext, a leader in court reporting and deposition solutions in the United States, whose customers rely on them to provide services and technologies that streamline the deposition process and help manage even the most complex cases. Seeing the potential benefits of virtual meetings, Veritext set a goal to create a secure web conferencing system that enables legal participants to share documents and ideas in real time, just like they would in in-person meetings, except without the time, costs, and delays of travel, and worked with us at eSyncTraining to accomplish this.

The solution we came up with was StreamText Legal, which we further customized for Veritext’s own Veritext Virtual. Based on the web conferencing software Adobe Connect, the solution offers high-quality live video and not just screen-sharing. It is a more secure file sharing that lets attorneys upload documents or exhibits for all participants to see. The StreamText Legal solution and Veritext Virtual also go a step further, offering a virtual legal deposition and transcription pod for Adobe Connect. With this technology, meetings and depositions gain live, instantly searchable transcriptions for a clear and accurate record.

With these services, suddenly online meetings feel a lot more like in-person interactions. Attorneys can meet “face-to-face” with clients or opposing council and review documents together, all in a highly secure environment. In addition, Veritext Virtual brings some added benefits only possible in online meetings by archiving all audio, video, documents, and transcripts instantly for a complete record of the deposition.

Technology is making the world a whole lot smaller with telecommunications, telecommuting, and teleconferences. It’s no surprise that tele-depositions are already gaining in popularity. Enhanced, more reliable online collaboration is removing physical barriers from business, even in industries like legal where resistance to new approaches is often understandable given concerns about security and other issues. By taking distance out of the equation, clients are free to work with the best legal teams and apply the technology best suited for their situation, no matter where they are located.

For more information on the solution, a case study can be viewed here, and you can learn how to get ahold of the pod here.

We’re pleased to report that on Dec. 10th, Gartner, Inc. positioned Adobe in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing” research report. Adobe was one of 12 Web conferencing vendors evaluated.

This is the 6th consecutive year that Adobe is positioned in the Leaders Quadrant. In addition, Adobe maintains the leading position amongst all vendors for “Completeness of Vision” for the 2nd year in a row.

Of the companies positioned in the Leaders Quadrant, David Mario Smith (@DaveMario) of Gartner wrote:

“Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have achieved significant market share, while demonstrating an ability to respond to customers’ needs. Leaders have robust, scalable products with a wide range of features, a large installed base, acceptable financial performance and good distribution. Leaders are doing well today and are prepared for the future.”

This is very exciting for us, as we have focused heavily on delivering a best-of-breed web conferencing platform to support the mission critical business processes within our customers’ organizations. We believe our Leaders placement in the report further affirms that our efforts are aligning well with the needs of our customers, and is extremely encouraging as we continue to innovate around end-to-end solutions for collaboration, eLearning and webinars, accessible across any device.

The report is available on our site here and from Gartner here. We encourage you to learn more about all that Adobe Connect has to offer here.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

As effective as Adobe Connect is with helping companies collaborate more efficiently and save costs in a variety of areas, what often gets overlooked is how various government agencies are benefitting from the use of Adobe Connect.

Recently, FedTech and StateTech Magazines, which focus on the government’s use of technology, spotlighted how the Department of Defense and the Bainbridge Island Police Department are using Adobe Connect Web conferencing in their everyday operations.

Those of you who follow this blog know that Adobe Connect has been used in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Connect Online (DCO) program for some time, but you may not know that the DoD expanded its use of Adobe Connect to support Adobe Connect Mobile in its new Defense Information System Agency’s (DISA) Mobile Project.  FedTech Magazine interviewed DISA enterprise collaboration services program manager, Karl Kurz, who talked about how the agency uses Adobe Connect. One of the more interesting uses Kurz talked about is how DCO allows deployed soldiers to keep in touch with family members back home. Kurz said with Adobe Connect, “The ability to respond to visual cues and to see dynamic content on another person’s computer makes this form of communication much more effective than other less media-rich methods.”

StateTech Magazine sat down with Detective Trevor Ziemba of the Bainbridge Island Police Department to discuss its unique use of Adobe Connect. For the last three years, the department has been using Adobe Connect along with Connect Mobile to assist in maritime response, allowing the department to quickly initiate video-conferencing sessions with county and state SWAT teams. Ziemba said, “I could shoot live feeds and still photos and feed it to others in the video conference, and we had the same capabilities as the original system — the ability to interact, share files and data, text and talk via [Voice over IP].”

You can get the full stories of these Adobe Connect applications at the magazines’ websites or by clicking the links above. And if you have any unique use cases for Adobe Connect, we’d love to hear them, so feel free to share in the comments below.