February 26, 2009
OK – so the last customer round-up was in August 2007 – how time flies. Of course, what I could do is round up all the customers from the last 16 months. Or I could spread them out – which is exactly what I’m going to do.
I’ve actually managed to find 4 excellent LiveCycle case studies that all begin with A! How’s that for a new start…
Argentina National Social Security Administration (ANSES) – Argentina’s first public agency to initiate a long-term project to more fully automate work processes, reduce reliance on printed materials—which amounts to more than 150 million pages annually – and improve citizen services. To help achieve its goals, the agency deployed Adobe LiveCycle ES solutions in its Systems and Telecommunication Management department to automate forms processes—including support for digital signatures. ANSES has approximately 100 internal paper-based forms, all of which are to be converted to digital forms over a period of two years.
According to Pablo Fontdevila, System and telecommunication manager at ANSES: “Our (ANSES) processes are now almost immediate and are more secure than ever. Calculations on forms are automated, helping to accelerate completion of forms and reduce errors. Also, the digital signatures help ensure that documents are not altered during transmission.”
Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) – Not nice, but important – In Australia, there are approximately 12,600 new cases of bowel cancer and 4,700 deaths from the disease each year. If bowel cancer is detected before it has spread beyond the bowel, the chance of surviving at least five years after diagnosis is 90%. The risk of developing bowel cancer rises sharply and progressively after the age of 50.
The Australian DoHA has implemented an Adobe LiveCycle and PDF-based “SmartForms” to streamline the collecting of and collaborating on information from individuals participating in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.
The solution has some (almost) unbelievable results: estimated return on investment (ROI) of up to 923% over a three-year period and recouped investment in LiveCycle ES solutions in only one month!!
Antwerp Port Authority – More than 16,000 seagoing ships and 65,000 barges call at the port of Antwerp annually. In response to the European Directive on Invoicing (EC/115/2001) that requires member states to implement electronic invoicing as part of local value-added tax (VAT) legislation, the Port Authority deployed an advanced e-invoice system, leveraging Adobe LiveCycle ES software and GlobalSign DocumentSign digital certificates.
Allgaier Automotive GmbH – Allgaier has been using an Adobe LiveCycle solution to simplify user rights and role management when sharing documents. The new platform helps deliver on some long-promised capabilities of Internet and web technologies: evolving communication from push to pull technology. No longer are e-mails sent with large attachments; instead, data can be made available from a central location, enabling recipients to access data when the need arises and be notified automatically when new data is available.
If you want to know more, email me here
February 13, 2009
Saturday 14th Feb is not just Valentine’s Day, it also sees the start of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. The largest cycling event in America, the is a Tour de France-style cycling road race that challenges the world’s top professional cycling teams to compete along a demanding, recently expanded, 750-mile course from Sacramento to Escondido from February 14-22, 2009.
Race fans can follow the tour, and the progress of their favorite riders and teams, with the race trackers built on using Flex, AIR, Flash Player, Flash video and LiveCycle technologies.
You can read the press release (and see some video) here.
You can follow the race here.
An you can see what Duane Nickul has to say about it here.
January 23, 2009
Adobe has been ranked the 11th best company to work for in the US in Fortune’s Annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” List. You can read about it here if you like!
January 14, 2009
Right – getting back into the swing of this blogging thing – two posts in one day!
Adobe announced on Monday the immediate availability of LiveCycle Developer Express via Amazon Web Services. You can see the whole release here, but what this actually means is that enterprise developers can prototype, develop and test LiveCycle ES applications in a virtual, self-contained development environment without needing to install or configure LiveCycle.
September 17, 2008
News from the Zend/PHP conference….
Zend Technologies yesterday announced a collaboration with Adobe to bring together the flexibility, productivity and enterprise reliability of Zend’s PHP technologies with the user experience benefits of Adobe Flex. The two companies will deliver technologies, content and services to make it easy for enterprise developers to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) using Flex on the client and PHP on the server. These RIAs are easier to use, speed real-time decision-making and increase employee productivity.
For more info, see here. If you would like to talk to Abobe about this announcement email me here, if you would like to talk to Zend, then email Brad here
September 9, 2008
Evening sports-fans…
Now anyone would think reading the last few entries to this blog that I am big on watching sport! Anyone who knows me would know that’s not really true – although I did just watch the final of the US Open, live, on-line, via Flash.
Anyway, little news round-up from the last few days….
Today, Adobe announced that DIRECTV is powering its next-generation NFL Sunday Ticket SUPERCAST service for SuperFan customers on the Web with Adobe Flash technology and Adobe AIR software. DIRECTTV customers can stream live NFL games, DIRECTV’s Red Zone Channel and up-to-the-minute scores and statistics in the browser using the free Adobe Flash Player. In addition, DIRECTV is also providing SUPERCAST as a downloadable AIR application. You can read all about it here.
(American) Football fans without access to DIRECTV aren’t left out in the cold however. Late last week, Adobe announced a partnership with The National Football League (NFL) to deliver live online video streaming of NBC Sunday Night Football games on NFL.com and NBCSports.com using Adobe Flash technology. Again, read all about it here.
Of course, as a Brit I have not the slightest comprehension about American Football, so I’ll finish off with a bit more general technology! In just 6-months since its release, we announced today that there have been more than 25 million installations of applications deployed on Adobe AIR. I’m sure you all have your favourites. Mine is a dead-heat between Tweetdeck and Keeley!
Anyway, to read more about all the other great AIR applications available, read the press release here, or check some of them out here.
August 28, 2008
The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing had the world tuning in to watch their favorite sports, athletes and teams – but not just on TV. 2008 saw an explosion in the amount of content being watched via the internet, and Adobe Flash Player was leveraged by both the BBC and China’s CCTV.com to deliver both live and on-demand Web video content.
A number of blogs have been posted that might be of interest to you,
including:
John O’Donovan from the BBC and Adobe’s Ryan Stewart
Ryan makes some very interesting points, including:
* The majority of online video for the Olympics was delivered in Flash.
* For Beijing the BBC streamed nearly 40 million videos with up to 5.5 million Olympic videos watched each day at an average of around 3
million. In total there were 6.5 million hours of video delivered using Flash by the BBC.
* In the first 10 days CCTV’s website streamed Olympic coverage to 100 million people…So in China we’ll have 2,900 hours of Olympic content backed up and ready to watch with Flash Video.
You can find more information about the CCTV solution from the Adobe press release, but if you would like further information, please contact me.
August 12, 2008
It’s been a while since my last blog post – but I am going to try and get the blogging frequency turned up a little moving forward! As a kick-start I thought I’d give an update on press releases over the last few months.
First up, the Olympics (what else!). Adobe has teamed up with CCTV International Networks Co., Ltd (the company that owns the mainland China and Macau online video media rights to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games) to deliver over 5000 hours of video content (3,800 hours of Olympic game video and 1,200 self-made video) from the games. You can read the press release here, but essentially the 5000 hours of Flash video content will be delivered to millions of sports fans in mainland China and Macau through the "Olympic Network TV Station", CCTV.com’s next-generation online experience based on Adobe Flash and Flex technology.
Still on the subject of Flash video, back at the beginning of July, Adobe announced that we are working with Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the SWF format. The press release is here, but essentially this announcement will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe.
Just in case you haven’t had enough video news, one more piece to wrap up. In mid June (I know, I’ve been absent from blogging for some time!) Adobe provided an update on the uptake of the Adobe Media Player. The press release is available here and the player is available here – unfortunately it is only available in the USA at the moment, but I know the team is working hard to change this!
On a more enterprisey note, in mid-June Adobe announced the a significant update to the LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES). Major additions to the suite include LiveCycle Content Services ES – based on the Alfresco Open Source CMS – and LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES. You can read the press release here.
Finally, MAX time is approaching fast. MAX USA is in San Francisco (Nov 16 – 19), and MAX EMEA is in Milan (Dec 1 – 4). Press release is here and MAX info is here.
June 2, 2008
A couple of big news items from the Acrobat team here at Adobe.
First up, we announced today the forthcoming introduction of Acrobat 9. You can read the press release here, but a few highlights include:
- Deep support for Adobe Flash technology within PDFs – enabling the inclusion of Flash video and .swf files in PDF documents
- Tighter real-time collaboration capabilities
- PDF Portfolios, the ability to assemble multiple media types, such as documents, video, audio, and even 3D objects, into one, compressed PDF file.
Next up, The Acrobat team at Adobe have also announced the public beta of Acrobat.com. Acrobat.com is a "a suite of hosted services available as free public beta that puts communication, productivity, and collaboration tools close at hand within a Web browse."
You can read the press release here, but again a few highlights include:
- Adobe Buzzword, a Web-based word processor that makes it easy to co-author and share documents for comment and review, creating high-quality print results
- Adobe ConnectNow, a personal Web conferencing service that includes desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat
- Centralized online file sharing with access controls and online PDF conversion
- Developer APIs for real-time collaboration, file sharing and conversion
However, like all these things, it’s much better to use it than read it – so go to acrobat.com, sign-up and check it out.
February 6, 2008
Great news that Kevin Lynch has been named Adobe Chief Technology Officer. As Shantanu says in the press release “Kevin has made a tremendous impact expanding our technology vision during his time at Adobe…Kevin’s insights and passion for rich Internet applications, and what they signify for the future of software across operating systems and devices, will help enable the next generation of innovation for our customers.”
You can read the whole press release here: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200802/020508KevinLynchCTO.html
Congratulations to Kevin.
