Adobe Connect Blog

by Guillaume Privat, Director Adobe Connect

A recent report published by Forrester Research recognised Adobe CQ as a leader in web experience management. “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Digital Customer Experience, Q2 2013” report looked at 10 web content management (WCM) products, one of which was Adobe CQ, across 100 comprehensive criteria such as vendor’s current offering, strategy and marketing presence.

Adobe CQ is the underlying technology used in Adobe Connect 9 Events module used to create rich events catalog, micro-sites or landing page.  It provides an easy drag and drop framework that enables any webinar producers to create and update rich and professional looking information and registration pages without the need to work with IT or external agencies.  It speeds up the process of the creation of these pages and reduces to cost to create great looking landing pages that will help build a large audience for a webinar.

In addition to CQ, Connect 9 Events provide also out of the box analytics powered by Adobe Analytics (previously known as SiteCatalyst), which help marketers analyze and optimize every step of their webinar: optimize the registration form, optimize email communications, optimize webinar promotional spend, optimize webinar content delivery.

For the price of the Adobe Connect Events module, webinar producers can access 3 leading technologies seamlessly integrated into an out of the box complete solution for webinars: Adobe CQ to create rich landing pages, Adobe Connect to run rich and engaging webinars and Adobe Analytics to measure and optimize the entire webinar experience.

Adobe Connect has won the “Silver” and “Excellence” awards in the webcasting category of TopTenREVIEWS, an online publication that conducts side-by-side comparisons of products and makes them publicly available.

The review begins by calling Adobe Connect 9 “a vibrant new version that invites considerable attendee participation, offers helpful and sophisticated tools to build webcasts, and gives presenters the option of hosting a webcast completely from a mobile device.” Among the features highlighted are the ability to integrate various extensions into meeting rooms, to completely host meetings from a mobile device, and the ways Adobe Connect lets users promote webinars and measure audience engagement.

The review concludes by stating, “Whether you want to generate interest in a new product, drum up new customers, meet privately with fellow employees scattered around the globe or conduct continuing education, Adobe Connect 9 is certain to have the tools and capabilities you need.”

It is terrific to see this kind of validation of our webinar solution, enabling our customers with the tools, services, and support they need to drive successful events including webcasts across large audiences.

Read the full review here: http://webcasting-services-review.toptenreviews.com/adobe-connect-review.html

The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) recently announced the 25 finalists for its 12th annual 2013 Excellence.gov Awards Program. Established by ACT-IAC in 2001, the Excellence.gov Awards Program recognizes exceptional government programs and projects that fuel government efficiency, interagency collaboration, and the delivery of impactful citizen services through innovative technologies.

Defense Connect Online (DCO) has been chosen as a finalist in the category of Excellence in Intergovernmental Collaboration. DCO is a deployment of Adobe Connect for the Department of Defense managed by DISA. In addition to DCO, other very prominent programs highlighted in this category include:

• North American Day Public Health Alerts Pilot Project 2012 – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) Website – Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), DOD
• Utah OneStop Business Registration (OSBR) – Utah Department of Technology Services, State of Utah
• Veterans Job Bank – U.S Department of Veteran Affairs

The Awards luncheon is being held at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC on March 5, 2013, where the winners will be announced in each of the five categories and honoring all finalists.

To read more about this outstanding accomplishment, you can find the press release located here: http://www.actgov.org/about/pressroom/Documents/ACT-IAC%20Announces%202013%20Excellence.gov%20Awards%20Finalists.pdf

Over the past year, recognition continued to roll in for Adobe Connect.  Another great review that came in at the end of 2012 was from Network World.

Network World conducted side-by-side comparisons of eight of the leading Web conferencing vendors and ranked Adobe Connect in a tie for first. The Network World web conferencing vendor test ranked the services according to four scenarios ranging from meetings of two to five people to large scale webinars.

We were excited to see the areas where the review praised Adobe Connect, including the ability to host large-scale webinars calling it a “post-conferencing reporting powerhouse.” Network World also noted “Connect also has the strongest features when it came to measuring audience engagement and supporting archival meeting content.” Other areas where Network World positioned Adobe Connect above other offerings were the recording options available, including the ability to record the chats and participants names, and its mobile client, noting its “consistent user interfaces and clean look.”

In addition, the review discussed persistent URLs for Adobe Connect meeting rooms, calling them “handy when a team is working over a period of time on a set of documents.” As our customers know, this feature is also useful for setting up last-minute, ad hoc meetings.

Another area the review considered was the audio options each service provides. Our own Alistair Lee recently blogged about our Universal Voice feature, which lets users leverage VoIP or their audio provider of choice.

We’re interested in what you have to say, though, after you give the roundup review a read. Let us know what stands out, good and bad, and what you’d like to see more of from us moving forward.

One of the great things about Adobe Connect is the terrific partner community that supports, resells, promotes, and innovates on Adobe Connect solutions. We were very excited when Adobe Connect partner, ConnectSolutions, was awarded the Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice GOLD Award for Blended Technology, for their work with the Veterans Affairs Acquisition Academy (VAAA). The award was announced in a ceremony several weeks ago at the annual CLO Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The Learning in Practice Awards recognize industry leaders with demonstrated excellence in design and delivery of employee development programs. Awards are given to both practitioners and providers, in a variety of categories, including strategy, global learning, business impact, and blended technology.

“VAAA has a fantastic team of eLearning innovators,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, ConnectSolutions CEO/Co-Founder. “We love partnering with our customers to ensure things run flawlessly, which lets our customers do the things the care most about, like creating and developing innovative content.”

VAAA was created within the United State Department of Veterans Affairs to build a stronger workforce at the Veterans Administration, in the midst of budget cuts, workforce reductions and a high retirement rate. They are committed to best in class training and innovation, including a variety of learner engagement techniques, even creating their own games to integrate into training programs.

I was pleased this morning to see a tweet from the CODiE Awards (@CODiEAwards) congratulating Adobe Connect (@AdobeConnect) on becoming a finalist in the Best Collaboration/Social Networking Solution category for the CODiE Awards.

Congrats @AdobeConnect – 2012 #SIIA CODiE Awards finalist in Best Collaboration/Social Networking Solution #CODiE12 #AATC

— CODiE Awards (@CODiEAwards) April 11, 2012

I spend a large part of my day in Adobe Connect meetings conducting business with the rest of my team and colleagues in regions all around the world, so it was particularly gratifying to see web conferencing technology recognized for the efficiencies it brings to collaboration.

In fact, Adobe Connect has been getting quite a bit of recognition from the industry lately. The product was recently honored as part of the Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards in the Technology for Virtual Classroom Training or Conferencing category.

We were also included on a list of the top applications for the Mac by PC Magazine. And PC Magazine has recognized the product in the past, as well, with its Editors Choice rating for Adobe Connect 8.

We’re continuing to innovate and look forward to sharing more with you as we go…as always, please stay tuned and in touch.

Defense Connect Online (DCO), the Adobe Connect and XMPP chat deployment at the US Department of Defense run by the Defense System Information Agency (DISA) has been nominated for 2012 Excellence.Gov awards by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council.

The charter of the awards is to promote “excellence in advancing the business of government through technology”.  DCO is nominated in the excellence in intergovernmental collaboration. The award recognizes programs that were designed and/or operated with close cooperation and coordination between different levels of government. Examples: social service programs that are funded and overseen by the Federal government but implemented by state and/or local governments; emergency response programs that require cooperation between various governments.

DISA is a combat support agency that plans, engineers, and maintains global net-centric solutions serving a diverse group of autonomously managed United States Department of Defense (DoD) enterprises. These include the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Combatant Commands, and the nation’s military branches.  It launched DCO in 2008 as a collaboration service available to all DoD personel.  Since then hundreds of thousands of users signed up for the service.  DCO supports a large number of operations worldwide ranging from tactical war fighting to day-to-day office use, briefings, mission rehearsals, one-to-one and group on-the-spot collaboration, training, eLearning, and dozens of other functions.

Adobe Connect was selected to power the DCO solution because of its secure architecture and ability to run in a completely secured cloud.  Yet, because of its ease of entry into a meeting, it enables to quickly bring together users from multiple government agencies or even NGOs into a situation room and use that room persistence for both real time and as well as a-synchronous collaboration.

Last summer based on the success of the program, DISA expanded DCO though a $90million dollar contract, possibly the largest contract in the web-conferencing industry.

If you are interested to learn more about DCO, take a look at our case study and or follow DCO on Facebook.

- Guillaume Privat, Director, Adobe Connect

Yesterday, at the Enterprise Learning! Conference & Expo, the Best of Elearning! 2011 awards results were announced. Program recognition is significant because nominations and winners are determined by executives and business managers engaged in the areas of enterprise learning and workforce technology.

We’re very pleased that Adobe Connect has been recognized in two categories:

• Best Web Seminar Solution – Winner

 “Nice interface, great performance that allows in-depth learner interactions.”

• Best Virtual Classroom – Winner

Nominations and voting were conducted over a three month balloting period. Given both the quality of competition and quantity of nominations – this year featured 1,750 nominations, covering 56 products across 20 categories – we thank all who took the time to vote and support Adobe Connect!

To read more about the awards and results, please see the press release from the Elearning! Media Group here.

And if you’re not already following us on Twitter, check us out @AdobeConnect.

-Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

Votes have been cast and the results are in – we’re thrilled that Adobe Connect has won both the Best Web Seminar and Best Virtual Classroom categories in this year’s Best of Elearning! awards program.

Best of Elearning! recognition is particularly noteworthy because nominations and winners are entirely determined by the readers of Elearning! magazine – executives and business managers engaged in the areas of enterprise learning and workforce technology.

Nominations and voting were conducted online during August and September. Given both the quality of competition and quantity of nominations – this year featured 1,730 nominations, covering 37 companies and 67 products – we’re thankful to all of you who took the time to vote in support of Adobe Connect!

You can read more about all the award winners, including us, on the Elearning! site here.

And if you’re not already following us on Twitter, check us out @AdobeConnect.

Thrilled to see that the U.S. Department of State has been nominated for an award at Adobe’s annual MAX user conference! The CO.NX project was named a finalist in the public sector category, which recognizes the most innovative use of technology. The U.S. Department of State developed CO.NX to connect U.S. experts with international audiences to better teach the world about the U.S, its policies, and people.
As a tangential aside, Mark Hamill (AKA Luke Skywalker) will be presenting the award in Los Angeles to the winner on October 6.
Please take a minute and vote for CO.NX here: https://www.adobemaxsubmission.com/viewer/?projectid=121.
Congratulations to the entire CO.NX team!