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February 22, 2006
Chizen on EP
Chizen on EP: Wharton School of Business interviews Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen. Lots of material I haven't seen elsewhere. Engagement Platform: "The combination of Acrobat's PDF file format and the Adobe Reader with Flash's SWF file format and the Flash Player enables us to create an 'engagement platform.' Think of it as a layer or a vehicle in which anybody can present information that could be engaged with in an interactive, compelling, reliable, relatively secure way -- across all kinds of devices, all kinds of operating systems... If we execute appropriately we will be the engagement platform, or the layer, on top of anything that has an LCD display, any computing device -- everything from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone." Universal Client ("Apollo"): "We won't do a browser. But we do think that there are applications that need to run on the user's desktop client software that need to work in both a connected and a non-connected fashion, that require the richness of Flash, the reliability, the relative security, the layout capabilities of PDF -- but also need to consume HTML. Imagine a ubiquitous client that allows you to do all three of those -- and then a series of programming tools, like Adobe's Flex, making it easy for anyone to develop applications for this ubiquitous client. (Q) So this would be a desktop runtime environment? Chizen: That's a good way of thinking about it, yes." Lots more on enterprise development, the Adobe Business Units and how they were staffed, hints of future product integration & development, getting the Engagement Platform to pocket-sized devices, the importance of Macintosh and Linux in platform-neutral computing. Lots more here. Final line: "Just about everything you look at -- a label, a movie you go to, a video on the web, a billboard, a sign when you get off the airplane -- was probably touched by a piece of Adobe software. By having that engagement platform we could do more of this into the future. We can make our customers' lives easier and make the user's experience that much more interesting. All of us are being bombarded with information. I want a great experience, even if I am filling out a boring mortgage application or a tax form. I want a great experience. Ten years from now we will be providing that."
Posted by John Dowdell at February 22, 2006 3:20 PM