ARena

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.

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.

Just a VERY quick entry to let you all know that I have moved from the UK to the USA.  I’m still with Adobe – and still in Analyst Relations, but now I’m based in San Jose, not Stockley Park.

My new roles is looking after Analyst Relations around the LiveCycle products and solutions, but I’ll still be using ARena to keep you informed on all areas of Adobe’s business.

More soon

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.

Adobe’s mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information. For businesses and organizations, engaging customers has never been more critical to their bottom line.  In December 2007 we sponsored a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit into the importance of engagement in the public sector.  According to the press release "eight out of 10 government executives see constituent engagement as important to their agency’s success going forward. Most executives also acknowledge that failure to engage with citizens can hurt an agency’s ability to stay on budget and fulfill its mission." Read the full press release here, or keep up with Adobe’s Engagement theme here.

A little late I know, but here’s a round-up of the Adobe releases from December 2007

Flash news:

First up some news about developments in the Flash world. At the beginning of December we announced Flash Media Server 3 which "offers streaming media and real-time communication capabilities to the broadest possible audience. With industry standard H.264 video capabilities and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, Adobe Flash Media Server 3 provides content owners with increased protection for streaming high quality video and allows for the delivery of interactive media applications that work consistently across multiple browsers and operating systems." Read the details here.

To tie in with this announcement, Adobe also announced that the latest version of Flash Player 9 (available to download here) now includes H.264 standard video support. Essentially that means that your PC can be a HiDef media player. As Kevin says: "The inclusion of industry standard H.264 support in Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, the Adobe Creative Suite® product line and Adobe Flash Media Server 3 brings new HD capabilities to millions of Flash developers and a new generation of viewers who are turning to the Web as the place to find their favorite shows and video content." Read the full release here.

RIA news:

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) has announced that they plan to adopt Flex and LiveCycle Data Services for its new Mission Support System.  Read the release here. According to NATO: "Adobe Flex is accepted worldwide and provides us with a new opportunity to automate the flight preparation process and save valuable time. It goes without saying that it is crucial for the NATO crew to have access to relevant information. The visual electronic maps present all the information in an intuitive manner which makes the MSS very user-friendly."

Still on the RIA theme, Adobe has also announced plans to open source elements of LiveCycle Data Services. Essentially we have released the source code for remoting and messaging technologies under a new open source product named BlazeDS. Read the release here, or access the code here. For more information on Adobe’s approach to Open Source, go here.

Corporate news:

Adobe announced Q4 (and FY07) financial results on December 17th – for the first time breaking the $3b per annum revenue milestone.  Read the release here.  For completeness, we also announced the Adobe Board of Directors has approved a 30 million share increase to the stock repurchase program announced in April 2007. Read about that here.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2008. I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing holiday.
First up, New Year Resolution time – I will (try really hard) to keep ARena up-dated a lot more regularly in 2008 that I did during the second half of 2007!
Now the Happy Birthday bit – as you might know Adobe celebrated its 25th anniversary at the very end of 2007 and I thought you’d be interested in seeing how Adobe is celebrating. The Adobe 25th Anniversary Newsletter (newsletter doesn’t actually do it justice, really it’s an incredibly cool ebook) commemorates Adobe’s history of innovation and the complete Adobe story, including past, present and a look toward the future. You can find it here – http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/history/
The newsletter is produced in Flash (what else!) and contains some amazing video and a digital timeline.
I wish you a very successful 2008 and look forward to providing you with more and more compelling and engaging stories on ARena over the new 12 months.

I’ve had a bit of a hiatus from the old blog over the last few month – not for lack of news, more through lack of time!  Anyway, I’ll be pouring a bit more into ARena over the next few days – news from the Adobe MAX events, customer wins and other news from the last couple of months.

Before we get into that, I wanted to share the most recent news from Adobe that the company has named Shantanu Narayen as President and Chief Executive Officer, with Bruce Chizen stepping down from this role. Bruce will serve the remainder of his term on Adobe’s Board of Directors through the Spring of 2008 and continue in a strategic advisory capacity through the end of fiscal year 2008.

From the press release: "“Bruce Chizen’s vision has helped transform Adobe from a company that was known mainly for its popular design products into one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world,” said Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, Adobe’s chairmen of the Board of Directors. “We thank him for his outstanding leadership and contributions to Adobe’s success during his entire 14 years at Adobe and the past seven as CEO.”

For more info, you can read the press release here.

Good luck to Bruce and Shantanu.

In light of the launch of ColdFusion 8 earlier this week, I thought I’d provide a round-up ColdFusion customers. Apparently,
more than 300,000 developers at over 10,000 companies worldwide rely on ColdFusion. With more than 125,000 ColdFusion servers deployed, makes ColdFusion on of the most widely adopted web technologies in the industry.

Arizona State University -
With so many things to do and see in today’s 24×7 world, grabbing students’ attention and keeping it can be a formidable challenge. At Arizona State University (ASU), more than 500 graduate students around the world enrolled in Online MBA and Executive Education programs in the W. P. Carey School of Business enjoy appealing, interactive, online course work developed and delivered using a full complement of Adobe software, including ColdFusion. 
ASU is using the rich application services of ColdFusion to deliver content housed on ASU’s server to students, as well as tapping ColdFusion components for building functions for different student interfaces and platforms. “ColdFusion enables us to leverage existing development resources to publish anywhere—a vital capability in reliably reaching 500 far-flung students. With ColdFusion, students can load content far faster than if we were delivering flat XML files,” says
Michael Ritchie. “And we can combine ColdFusion with Flash to have a more fluid interface and a simple, elegant cross-platform solution.”

Children’s Hospital Boston – Children’s Hospital Boston is the nation’s leading pediatric medical center and the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. In addition to its 347 inpatient beds and comprehensive outpatient programs, Children’s Hospital houses the world’s largest research enterprise at a pediatric medical center. All hospital workers require ongoing training to ensure compliance with requirements from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and professional accrediting agencies. This is no small undertaking at Children’s Hospital, where nearly 3,000 doctors and nurses work alongside 4,600 employees and approximately 1,000 volunteers.
The IT staff at Children’s Hospital Boston uses ColdFusion to integrate front-end processes with critical back-end systems. Children’s Hospital also uses a range of other Adobe software including Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro, Acrobat and Acrobat Connect.

Here are a few other companies using ColdFusion in creative and innovative ways:

192.com – Case study

Aspen Skiing Company – Case study

County of San Diego, Department of Child Support Services – Case study

Crayola – Case study

eBags – Case study – this site also use Scene7 (an Adobe company)technology to render the images.

FAO Schwarz – Case study

International Speedway Corporation – Case study

MySwitzerland.com – Case study

Simon & Schuster – Case study

Quick entry to give an update on some recent announcements from Adobe.

Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8 – Press release can be found here. For those who aren’t familiar with ColdFusion, it’s "a powerful development tool for building dynamic Web sites and Internet applications, increases developer productivity, integrates with complex enterprise environments, and delivers rich and engaging experiences for users". Cool!

The public beta of ColdFusion 8 has been running since May 2007, with more than 14,000 developers participating, praising the new capabilities and providing Adobe with invaluable feedback.