Adobe Connect Blog

The use of videoconferencing in business has been on the rise over the last few years, but it wasn’t until recently that the Department of Defense (DOD) started heavily pushing for its use in its day-to-day operations. In the past, the DOD’s enterprise collaboration tool, Defense Connect Online (DCO), which is powered by Adobe Connect, had been used primarily to supplement physical conferences.

Recently, Federal Computer Week magazine sat down with our Mike Murtha, who manages the DCO program here at Adobe to discuss the DCO program. Mike reiterated the increased demand by the DOD to use videoconferencing to replace physical meetings and conferences. “Over the past three months, we have gotten a lot of inquiries [saying]: ‘We want to run an entire conference virtually,’” Murtha said.

FCW also discussed barriers that were in place that discouraged the use of videoconferencing such as costs, security concerns, and infrastructure requirements. The article noted that an advantage that Adobe Connect offers is that its services also provide videoconferencing capabilities for both desktops and mobile devices. Mike mentioned that the DCO system wasn’t initially built for videoconferencing, but that the customers are pushing it in that direction.

To read more about how federal agencies are promoting the use of videoconferencing, click here.

We’re pleased to report that on Dec. 5, Gartner, Inc. positioned Adobe in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2011 “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing” research report. Adobe was one of 12 Web conferencing vendors evaluated.

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.”

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

Stay in touch with us in comments and on Twitter @AdobeConnect – we’ll continue to share news and views on a range of Web conferencing topics.

-Guillaume Privat (@gprivat), Director, Adobe Connect

About the Magic Quadrant

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our 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.

We’ve written a lot lately about the extensibility of Adobe Connect; here’s a guest perspective from RefinedData’s Terry Shane

Let’s face it, the last thing we need is another web conferencing solution! Hardly a month goes by without yet another vendor offering a solution for “virtual meetings”.  How can you choose between a growing and bewildering list of products that all claim to offer the “best” solution? An odd way to start a post about Adobe Connect, but it’s an important point.

What makes smartphones “smart” is that they’re platforms on which third parties can build applications. Today’s phones can be remote control devices, trading platforms, game consoles, GPS systems, video cameras – anything someone can dream up – even a web conferencing interface!

Similarly, it’s this kind of extensibility that differentiates Adobe Connect from other web conferencing solutions – the ability to solve business problems with custom applications that operate inside of live and recorded meetings.

Extensibility enables business applications allowing multiple participants to collaborate in ways that are not possible outside of Adobe Connect. Other web conferencing tools are the equivalent of phones with limited functions, not supporting the ability of developers to build new tools and features.

You may be aware of extensions for Adobe Connect, tools that increase functionality and/or increase engagement. For example, there are extensions that calculate the carbon or cost savings for meetings or stream live video from external sources.

These custom pods can interact with external network services such as Google Maps, Yahoo! stock feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce, PayPal or any internet- or intranet-based API. An extension can pull data from these (and other) sources, as well as push data back. A feature unique to Adobe Connect – viewers of recorded meetings may work with these tools as well; they can be written to differentiate between a live event and a recording.

Consider what could be.

The possibilities are impressive – here are some ideas:

HR: On-boarding forms or employee surveys that are submitted directly back to the corporate database and create PDF versions that are emailed to the user.

Fund raising: Allow attendees of a fund-raising webinar to make donations within the live event or when watching the recording.

Custom shopping: Enter a product SKU and receive images, descriptions, pricing and inventory availability. Purchases executed in real-time without leaving the meeting room via integrated credit card transactions. Hosts could monitor purchases (without seeing sensitive info) and be able to offer incentives or limit the purchasing opportunity.

Sales: A viewer of a recorded event is able to enter a phone number for a call back from a salesperson or call center. The extension is sophisticated enough to recognize the user’s IP address, determine country and time-zone, check if the local center is open and average wait time, and automatically arrange the call back or generate a live call.

I’m just scratching the surface, but if you’d like to suggest some of your own ideas (via comments below or by sending me an email), I’ll present some of the most innovative in a future post. There really is no limit and I’d love to see what we can come up with.

Terry Shane, CEO, Refined Data Solutions (terry@refineddata.com)

Thanks for joining our Twitterview with Randah McKinnie yesterday. If you didn’t have a chance to attend or ask a question, please find below a recap of the entire Q & A session. Randah was able to answer a series of questions on recent Adobe Connect Mobile updates and announcements.

If you have any additional questions or are interested in our next event, keep following this blog or find us on Twitter @AdobeConnect.

To help tell our story, we’ve put the finishing touches on a video that does a nice job of introducing Adobe Connect web conferencing. It highlights benefits and capabilities, and also features a few organizations that are doing great things and realizing success with the solution.
We encourage you to watch Adobe Connect in action and learn how it’s helping organizations conduct more effective eLearning, web meetings, and webinars on devices of all kinds:

Keep an eye on us here and follow @AdobeConnect on Twitter — we’ll continue to share stories, tips, news and discuss a range of web conferencing topics.

Following the significant recent updates to our Adobe Connect Mobile web conferencing apps for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook, we’re excited to announce Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 for Apple iOS is now available!

Featuring new rich hosting capabilities, improved video quality, and an updated UI and improved navigation for greater flexibility and ease of use—Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 lets users host and participate in mobile conferences anytime, anywhere.

Control meeting access, permissions and activities from your mobile device

• Meeting hosts can:
  • Start and end meetings
  • Accept or deny guests from entering meetings
  • Enable or disable participant’s ability to broadcast their cameras and audio (VoIP)
  • Promote or demote user roles to and from Host, Presenter, and Participant
  • Remove users from meetings
  • Control all active pods
  • Start and stop content and screen sharing
  • Create and edit content in the Notes pod
  • Advance slides and animations (capability available to both Presenters and Hosts)

Enhanced user interface for even greater ease of use and control

• New layout and controls allow meeting attendees to more easily:
  • View all activity happening in the meeting at once
  • Focus on an activity to enter input in Public Chat, Private Chat, and Polls

Check out this demo to see some of the new features:

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 is now available for free download; check it out on iTunes Preview here. The app supports:

• iPhone 3GS with iOS 4 or higher
• iPhone 4 with iOS 4 or higher
• iPod Touch 3^rd and 4^th generation with iOS 4 or higher
• iPad and iPad 2 with iOS 4 or higher

For more information on Adobe Connect Mobile visit our Adobe Connect Mobile User Forum on connectusers.com.

We look forward to your thoughts—in comments, on Twitter @AdobeConnect, and on our mobile user forum.

Cheers,

Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

Mrs. Fields Famous Brands is known for delicious freshly baked cookies and TCBY frozen yogurt. They partnered with conferencing service provider MeetingOne to adopt Adobe Connect and establish a dynamic web conferencing platform. Now, staff and franchisees worldwide are more connected and via webcams, can engage in “face-to-face” videoconferencing. Web-based meetings are helping to enhance the company’s culture by affirming core values and communicating new developments.

Adobe Connect’s persistent meeting room capabilities make it quick and easy for Mrs. Fields to deliver meetings on the fly, which can be attended from laptops, mobile devices and smartphones. Recording features let stakeholders attend at any time, as convenient. Additionally, the company has expanded its market share by engaging and recruiting new franchisees through quarterly public webinars via Adobe Connect. Cost savings are also impressive — by decreasing travel time and expenses, Mrs. Fields is saving nearly $30,000 annually. To learn more about Mrs. Fields and its use of Adobe Connect, click here.

Stay in touch with us here and follow us on Twitter @AdobeConnect — we’ll continue to share successes, news and discuss a range of web conferencing topics.

Much recent discussion about web conferencing on this blog has centered on the extensibility of Adobe Connect and how our open approach to product development over time has delivered a rich, flexible solution that integrates well with other systems while solving real world challenges for wide range of customers.

Along this theme, many enterprises with particular requirements for security and compliance – especially those in government or highly regulated industries (e.g. financial services) – have turned to virtualization solutions to simplify desktop and application management, and ultimately increase control and security (the IT crowd loves this).

A lot of organizations have turned to VMware for these reasons. With VMware View (VMware VDI), desktop administrators virtualize the operating system, applications and user data to deliver desktops to end-users. Centralized automated management of these components increases control and improves business agility while providing a flexible, high-performance desktop experience, across a variety of network conditions.

Adobe and VMware teamed up to validate Adobe Connect 8 on VMware View 4.6 with the following goals:

• Verify that the Adobe Connect client can launch web-based meetings successfully from a VMware View desktop
• Verify that participants can view shared screens and documents with high quality
• Verify that multiple VMware View desktop sessions running on the same host can simultaneously present

The validation took place at VMware’s labs in Palo Alto in August.

Whitepaper

A joint white paper has been issued that describes the testing carried out jointly by VMware and Adobe. “Validating Adobe Connect Client on VMWare® View Desktops” provides technical considerations for running an Adobe Connect client in VMWare View desktops in order to participate in Adobe Connect web-based meetings. It also offers best practice recommendations for successful deployments:

• You can download the white paper from Adobe here.
• Alternately, you can download it from VMware here.

Stay in touch with us here and on Twitter @AdobeConnect – we’ll continue to share news and views on a range of web conferencing topics.

-Sanjay Agrawal, Senior Product Manager

Recently, award-winning computer graphics firm SYNQ Studios used Adobe Connect to deliver highly interactive, media-rich webinars to audiences around the globe. Working with the organizers of Cairo Media And Entertainment Trends Fair And Forum (CAIROMET), SYNQ Studios produced a series of webinars from its offices in Miami, involving graphic-design experts onsite in Cairo, who presented to more than 300 graphic-design professionals attending the sessions in-person. Concurrently, the webinar capabilities of Adobe Connect enabled more than 600 attendees from five continents to participate remotely in the dynamic lectures. Check out the video:

The dependability and stability of Adobe Connect enabled SYNQ Studios producers to support high-resolution visual media without dropped frames or quality loss, while the ability to quickly customize rooms and presentation layouts enhanced the experience for presenters. Adobe Connect provided a lively, engaging experience for the audience – regardless of location – helping them connect with presenters via interactive webinar features including split screens, polling, motion graphics, videos, live chats and webcams. On-demand recordings of the sessions enabled participants to view all of the event content at their convenience.

Due to their success with CAIROMET, SYNQ Studios is excited about developing new webinar initiatives. To read more about their use of Adobe Connect, click here.  

Stay in touch with us here and on Twitter @AdobeConnect as we continue to share stories, news and views on a wide range of web conferencing topics.

By Guillaume Privat, Director Product Management, Adobe Connect

A year ago, we launched the Adobe Connect ideas website to capture your inputs on what we should build in the product.  So far the feed-back has been great and we have already implemented many ideas in our C8, C8.1 and C8.2 releases.  Some ideas however are a better fit for 3rd party developers leveraging our SDK.

We have added categories and statuses to the idea site to help surface these ideas.  So whether you are a developer in search of inspiration to create a custom pod, or would like to submit custom pod ideas, read on for some suggestion on how to do this.

Adding a custom pod idea

Say you are a user of Adobe Connect and have an idea for a potential extension, for instance an Angry Birds collaborative pod: just log to the Adobe Connect Idea site with your Adobe ID, create a new idea by clicking on “post idea”.  Fill in the title and the description and select the category “custom pod”.  Submit.  Look at responses from the community on your idea. Simple and easy.

Viewing suggested ideas

If you are a developer in search of inspiration, the Adobe Connect ideas website can provide that inspiration.  Go the ideas site, and on the right side panel filter by either category = “custom pod” or status = “For SDK developer”.  Review the idea and post comments (you will need to log in using your Adobe ID to do so) to request more feedback on the idea.

To vote on my Angry Bird idea, vote here !