ARena

For a change I'm focusing on US-based customers for the April round-up.

The United Sates Defense Department - The United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) Forms Management Program has licensed Adobe technology (Acrobat and LiveCycle) to deploy a new solution aimed at automating processes and streamline operations by providing fillable forms to all US DoD entities, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Defense Agencies. The DoD Forms Management Program will provide nearly 1,000 electronic PDF forms across the military, ranging from officer commissions to facilities, medical claims, purchasing and accounts payable.

University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center (Fetal Treatment Center) -"With (Acrobat Connect) we can eliminate geographic barriers to world-class expertise for patients and physicians. Hospitals everywhere will look at our program as a new model to help save lives." - Colin Fahrion, UCSF Fetal Treatment Center. The Center has more expertise and experience in fetal medicine than any other institution in the world, integrating teams of specialists in surgery, genetics, obstetrics/perinatology, radiology, nursing, and neonatal medicine. Despite being a world-leader in the field, access to medical expertise can be severely limited simply by where a patient lives. By implementing an Acrobat Connect (Macromedia Breeze) solution experts at the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center are making themselves more accessible to patients and referring physicians anywhere in the world.

The UCSF has seen multiple benefits in implementing this solution, including; expanded patient and doctor access to specialist consultations; enhanced security of sensitive patient information delivered online; established new revenue streams for UCSF Medical Center; and adhered to archiving requirements.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center - watch the video

Colorado Department of Transportation - With more than 23 billion vehicle miles of travel on its roads each year, the Colorado Department of Transportation manages a 9,122-mile highway system, including 3,698 bridges The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has more than 150 highway construction projects underway statewide, all of which are being built by private contractors. Last winter, CDOT maintenance teams plowed 5.9 million miles of highway—equivalent to more than 10 round trips to the moon. They also repair road damage and potholes using more than 330,000 tons of asphalt!! The Colorado Department of Transportation used ColdFusion to develop the REMS - Real Estate Management System in only six months. This custom application helped CDOT justify new capital expenditures to upgrade existing facilities. The zero-footprint intranet application is accessible by 3,000 CDOT employees and cost a fraction of other possible commercial packages in the marketplace.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 11:00 AM | Permalink

A few years ago I don't think anyone would have described Adobe as a company that took full advantage of the open source community. But that is all changing with the announcement today that Adobe plans to release the source code for the Flex SDK to open source under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). You can read the full press release here.

As James puts it: "Open source co-creation is a powerful way to build a strong development community. Adobe's decision to open source the Flex SDK is a radical move which should attract a new class of developer to the platform."

This is the fourth open/standard announcement by Adobe since the end of last year, first we contributed the source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation under the Tamarin project; then we announced the use of the open source WebKit engine in the “Apollo” project; and third we released the full PDF 1.7 specification for ISO standardization.

As the blogsphere starts commenting on this announcement I'll pull together the links. As always, if you would like more information, drop me an email.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Adobe's second BIG PARTNER announcement in just over a week.  Last week was the news that Adobe and salesforce.com were working together on the Flex toolkit for Apex. This week comes the announcement that Adobe and SAP are collaborating on a new product, the SAP® Enterprise Learning environment.

From the press release: "SAP Enterprise Learning environment will help enable organizations to more easily conduct, measure and track virtual classes while allowing employees to collaborate in real-time with instructors and other learners. SAP and Adobe also announced that they have entered into a global reseller agreement that allows SAP to market and sell Acrobat Connect Professional as a standalone solution for enterprise-class Web-conferencing and collaborative communication."

Read the release here (or here if you want to see it on the SAP site!).

Posted by Timothy Brook at 03:15 PM | Permalink

Adobe and salesfoce.com today announced the availability of the Flex toolkit for Apex. You can read the details here, and download the toolkit here!

Apparently - "Using the new Flex Toolkit for Apex, developers can create richer application experiences for their salesforce.com deployments and Apex applications. Developers can also make their Flex-based applications available on the AppExchange directory, and deploy them on-demand and with no additional software required."

El Reg puts the announcement in context here and here.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 03:49 PM | Permalink

Little bit late on the Customer Round-up for March, but I've pulled together a Public Sector focused round-up this month.

Kane County Circuit Court - The Kane County Circuit Court Clerk understands first-hand the importance of delivering fast, efficient services to citizens. As the fifth largest county in Illinois, Kane County court staff manages over 150,000 cases annually, ranging from simple traffic violations to serious felonies. At the same time, the Circuit Court Clerk's office is responsible for handling citizen requests for orders of protection, which typically involve domestic violence cases.

Kane County were looking to improve the quality of services that victims of domestic violence receive when they came to the county for help. Historically it could take up to six hours to process an order of protection - and the office wanted to dramatically reduce that time.

To improve and streamline the processes, Kane County is using a web-based solution, powered by Adobe LiveCycle and Flex solutions to transform how orders of protection are accessed, completed, submitted, reviewed, and approved. The more integrated, automated processes translate into enhanced citizen services that can be delivered faster, more conveniently, and more cost effectively than ever.

The automated process built around Adobe LiveCycle software is dramatically faster than the previous manual process. Within approximately sixty seconds of having a judge sign the document, an order of protection arrives at the sheriff's office for input into the national wanted persons database. Overall, Kane County have seen seen as much as a five-fold improvement in the time it takes to complete, submit, and process orders of protection.

Berlin -The procurement process for hiring construction sector workers to work on federal projects in Germany is especially time-consuming and costly due to the complicated application procedure. The process begins with a job announcement in a publication such as the federal job site listing. Companies submit written bids along with the necessary job application forms. To send these documents, the respective office charges the bidder administrative, copying, and shipping costs, fees usually amounting to at least €20. The bidder then fills out the documents by hand and sends the entire bid in a sealed envelope to the respective administrative office. Confidentiality is of great importance as the offers are only opened and read after the submission deadline.

In an attempt to improve this extremely time consuming process, the state of Berlin began advertising its jobs electronically in 2004, and at the same time began a project to make the whole process on-line whilst ensuring the process adhered to the strict confidentially and other German federal laws.

The state of Berlin used an Adobe LiveCycle and PDF based solution to reduced government and industry costs for completing and processing project bids; simplified bid completion and selection processes; increased transparency of bid selection; minimized errors on bids by reducing manual processes; and accelerated bid review by integrating electronic forms with backend systems

Court of Cremona - The Italian legal system has traditionally managed case documents using paper-based processes that can drain resources, slow court proceedings, and impede collaboration across legal teams. As a result, legal staff—including magistrates, lawyers, court clerks, and administrators—often find themselves working in challenging conditions. To improve processes, the Court of Cremona wanted to adopt an information system that could help ensure “conditions of parity” between all parties involved in proceedings, a requirement stipulated in the Italian Constitution.To accomplish this goal, the court set out to implement a cost-effective, easy-to-use system that would dramatically reduce the amount of paper used during proceedings. Ideally, the solution could be deployed and maintained by government staff.

In 2003, the Court of Cremona began running technology tests and pilot schemes using PDF files to share digital documents among parties working on preliminary hearings. The approach is integrated into a system called DIGIT and has so far saved more than €356,000 since automating the management of case documents; eliminated the need to copy, route, and manage millions of pages of case proceedings annually; improved information sharing and availability across legal teams and court staff; and addressed government requirements stipulating reliable, secure access to case documents for all parties involved in hearings

Posted by Timothy Brook at 03:57 PM | Permalink

‘Once the most hated technology online, Flash has become one of the most loved.’

Coverage has appeared today in The Guardian about the changing perceptions of Flash - from 99% Bad in the late 1990's (Skip intro anyone?) to "the new publishing tool of the (21st) century".

Posted by Timothy Brook at 11:09 AM | Permalink

I was in NYC last week at Adobe's Financial and Industry Analyst Meetings. These events coincided with the launch of Adobe Creative Suite 3 AND CTIA (mobile jamboree in Orlando) - so a busy old week from a press release point of view.

Even from an internal point of view, I think it is amazing that in a single blog post I can write about news from one company (Adobe) that encompasses engineering 3D CAD, Mobile technology and partnerships, world-leading creative tools,electronic mortgages and digital signatures, and true business issues.

Any other software vendor out there who can do that??

He's a bit of a round-up for you....

3D: at the end of last week Adobe announced here the public preview of Acrobat 3D Version 8, allowing users to download the beta version here and test it out. I've seen some demo's of Acrobat 3D and it's very impressive to see very complex 3D CAD models converted into PDF and viewable in Reader! Adding the ability to measure, comment and make cross-sections of the models is truly amazing!

According to the press release...Acrobat 3D Version 8 will deliver enhanced capabilities for producing compressed PDF documents with precise geometry from large, complex CAD assemblies. The product supports conversion to 3D PDF from over 40 formats, including those for Autodesk Inventor, Dassault Systemes CATIA, PTC Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, and UGS NX and I-deas. The latest version also will enable users to distribute product manufacturing information—used to convey geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, annotations, and dimensions directly on a 3D model—in PDF. In addition, Acrobat 3D Version 8 users will have the option of exporting precise manufacturing CAD data from PDF into neutral file formats such as STEP, IGES and Parasolid for downstream processes such as machining operations and tool and mold design.

CTIA: Adobe was present at CTIA in Orlando last week showing the mobile world some of the great technology currently (and soon to be) driving the way people use their mobile devices.

First up is a release on the quite outstanding success that NTT DoCoMo has been seeing with its (FlashCast based) i-channel service. In less that 2 years, DoCoMo has seen it's i-channel server go from zero to 10million subscribers (that's an average of about 14,000 new subscribers to the service every, single day!!) I think the DoCoMo quote sums it up.."With 10 million subscribers in less than two years, i-channel has surpassed our most optimistic projections. With Flash Lite and FlashCast, Adobe has dramatically impacted the mobile experience for our subscribers.”

But it's not only Japan where Adobe is seeing success in the mobile space. In the USA, Verizon customers will be the first to experience the FlashCast service with Verizon Wireless being the first wireless operator in North America to bring Adobe FlashCast based data services to mobile subscribers, in the second half of 2007.

And on the other side of the world in Taiwan Adobe announced a similar partnership with Chunghwa Telecom to deliver FlashCast technology to more than eight million subscribers in Taiwan. The new offering is expected to deliver rich data services across the Chunghwa Telecom network before the end of 2007.

For the more "enterprisey" out there, this might be of interest. According to a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) for Adobe " more than eight in 10 executives believe their companies lose sales each year because of failure to create engaged customers, and one in 10 estimates insufficient engagement accounts for 50 to 75 percent of lost sales." Interestingly, " The report notes that while most executives believe that the ability to engage customers is increasingly critical to business success, few think their companies are doing it well, and executives believe this failure has an impact on the bottom line. They also view technology as having an increasingly vital role in their customer engagement strategies." You can see the release here, and a full copy of the report can be downloaded here.

Still on the "enterprisey" focus, Adobe announced with MISMO in Florida last week guidelines for the standardization of electronically signed PDF documents in the mortgage process! Might not sound quite as "cool" as mobile data services or 3D CAD in Reader, but if you consider the stress involved in buying a house, anything that can make the process less painful has got to be good news!  As Eugene Lee says " “Now, mortgage professionals can electronically integrate two of the most crucial steps of the mortgage process - signature gathering and verification - into the electronic mortgage workflow using PDF. With today’s announcement, we are one step closer to streamlining the entire electronic mortgage workflow, from application to fulfillment, with PDF.” Amen!

Finally, the really BIG news from last week was the launch of Adobe Creative Suite 3.This was the largest software release in Adobe's 25 year history - 13 point products, 6 suites, 9 key technologies, 2 services and 7 press releases! Check out JohnnyL's blog for more details and links to demos that will blow you away!

For the press releases, here's the full list:

Adobe Unleashes Creative Suite 3 Product Line

Adobe Debuts Creative Suite 3 Web Premium

Adobe Unveils Creative Suite 3 Design Premium

Adobe Reveals Creative Suite 3 Production Premium

Adobe Delivers Two Editions of Photoshop CS3

Adobe Introduces Powerful InDesign CS3 Release

Adobe Device Central CS3 Mobilizes Creative Pros

Posted by Timothy Brook at 01:23 PM | Permalink