Adobe Installation and Licensing

This is it. The official launch day. You’ve seen the trailers. You’ve bought your popcorn, soda and candy combo. You are in your seat. The lights fade. You are reminded to mute your cell phone ringer. You adjust your 3-D glasses. And here it is Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition 3.0 in 3D! Or AAMEE 3-D as we like to call it. Wait why are you taking off your 3-D glasses? What? Your head is hurting? You didn’t ask for the ability to package CS6 applications for the enterprise in 3-D? But our marketing research firm told us that 3-D was still popular. Ugh!

We did not in fact, make AAMEE 3.0 in 3-D. Although that would of been awesome! Okay, no it wouldn’t. A little bit awesome? Okay, I’ll drop it. AAMEE was created back during the CS5 cycle to address the fact that our proprietary installer format was about as helpful to enterprise IT admins as a puffer fish. A puffer fish? What the heck is this? Does Adobe know anything about how things are deployed in an enterprise? What am I supposed to do with this tetraodontidae? But AAMEE outputted the CS installers into pkg and msi files and worked with existing deployment solutions and life was good. Okay, life was bumpy at first, but then it got better. But some folks in the IT admin community simply patted us on the head and said “Nice, Adobe. I’m going to keep my workflow as it is, thank you. You go play now.” And honestly, that was fine. At least we gave folks the option to use our tool and those that did mostly liked it and thanked us even.

Flash forward to the release of CS6. Adobe has introduced new licensing and activation in CS6 that are as helpful to IT admins as, well, a puffer fish. If you are not into the puffer fish metaphor I apologize. That’s all I got. But don’t worry, when we saw these changes coming we said wait, wait, they do not want a puffer fish. So that was the main goal of this release: minimize the impact of the CS6 licensing and activation on the the IT admin. Nothing else. Nothing. Okay, that is not true. We also wanted to update the look and feel. We wanted to re-evaluate the text and make it more user-friendly. And we also wanted to make it easier for the IT admin to push out the items in the Exceptions folder. Okay, well that is it. Nothing else. Except we wanted to give admins a way to remotely update the Creative Suite apps. But other than that, nothing else. Really.

Let’s get into some specifics. How bad is this puffer fish and how are AAMEE 3.0′s de-puffer fish abilities? If you do a manual install of CS6 on a system the following will happen: An Adobe ID request will come up. Your end users HAVE to login with an Adobe ID account or they can’t use the software. Oh, that will be popular. Wait, the systems aren’t online or behind a secure firewall? Won’t work. Also, the systems HAVE to activate on a regular basis. Once again, not connected to the internet or behind an overly secure firewall? Won’t work. Now maybe you do imaging for your organization. You do an install on one base system. Login in with an Adobe ID and serialize it. Looks fine. Then you clone it to another system. Won’t work. There is now a relationship between the machine and the licensing in CS6. Let’s say you used a third party packaging tool like the venerable JAMF Composer tool. Guess what? Won’t work. No place within Composer to validate the Adobe ID or the online serial number validation.

Okay, so how well does AAMEE 3.0 reduce the pain of this puffer fish? First, using AAMEE 3.0 makes it so you only have to create/login with one Adobe ID on behalf of your organization therefore negating the need for your end users to have an Adobe ID at all or even know what one is. Second, the serial number is validated and activated within AAMEE 3.0. The end user’s system does not have to activate because you have already done it using AAMEE. Third and final, if you are imaging then AAMEE 3.0 has a special unserialized/trial workflow and a new serialization executable that can be used to serialize once the image has been applied to the machine. BAM! Puffer fish be gone!

I realize this is a weird product announcement. But I wanted to cover again our focus for this release as there has been a lot of reaction in the comments of previous posts. We really have gone out of our way to make sure these licensing and activation changes have the smallest impact to our enterprise customers. In a perfect world, AAMEE would of also removed the licensing-to-machine relationship all together, but that didn’t happen and I think we have an adequate workaround. Not awesome, but bearable. But the truth is, nobody likes change when there isn’t an obvious benefit for them personally. Like the time the construction on Highway 99 was going on and I had to do a massive reroute. I was grumpy. But then I realized that the reroute took me by one of my favorite bakeries so I could stop and get breakfast each morning. And there is no hidden bakery with the CS6 and AAMEE 3.0 release.

Okay, there is no hidden bakery but we did provide betas of our the new command line tools with this release: Exceptions Deployer application and Remote Update Manager which are pretty sweet and we’ll go in depth on them in another post. And we even put the Adobe Customization Wizard X in the Windows installer into AAMEE’s Utilities folder just to save time for IT admins who need to tweak their Acrobat install on Windows.

Give us the links already! Okay, but before I do, let me warn you that AAMEE 3.0 is only for CS6 media with a volume serial number. It does not work with CS 5.x media, eLearning Suite, TLS, etc. Just CS6. It does not work with retail serial numbers. AAMEE 3.0 and AAMEE 2.1 can not exist on the same system. That is my list of caveats, except the obvious one: AAMEE 3.0 should only be used for good, never for evil. Good and evil is very much on my mind as I am counting down the hours for another 3.0 release: Diablo III. Links Jody, give us the links!

AAMEE 3.0 Read Me

CS6 Enterprise Deployment Guide

AAMEE 3.0 FAQ

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition AAMEE 3.0 – Windows

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition AAMEE 3.0 – Mac

Thanks to the entire extended AAMEE crew for pulling together this release. I am very lucky to work with such a great team. And thanks Adobe for giving me the resources to put puffer fishes back into the ocean where they belong.

Jody Rodgers | Sr. Product Manager | Enterprise + Volume | CS + CCM | Adobe

The 3.0 version of Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) and associated English language documentation (Read Me and updated Deployment Guide) are available on the Adobe Licensing Website (LWS) a tad bit earlier than the official release date of 5/14/12. Why early? Well we because we were starting to feel like the waiter who has brought you your food and then realized they hadn’t brought you any silverware. Of course we knew that AAMEE was going to be released a week after CS6 shipped so that is a somewhat flawed metaphor, but I am hungry.

In LWS, you can find AAMEE 3.0 and the docs in the “App Mngr Ent Edition” section under “All” of the Downloads area. I do not know why it is called App Mngr Ent Edition but you know the whole LWS site is full of such gems.

I want to thank everyone on the AAMEE crew for helping us get the release out ahead of schedule. And GG and the LWS folks too. You all rock!

We will do a proper announcement on this blog on Monday, have direct download links, talk more about the new command line tools Exceptions Deployer application and Remote Update Manager. I am also going to do a FAQ about some of the questions that have come up around the licensing changes in CS6. I really do hope we will be able to persuade folks that we have gone out of our way to make sure the new licensing has minium impact to the IT admins charged with deploying CS6.

Jody Rodgers | Sr. Product Manager | Enterprise + Volume | CS + CCM | Adobe

If you do a web search for “deploy CS6″ do you know what comes up? The Nerf Deploy CS-6. What is that? A clip system Nerf blaster that was released in 2010 under the N-Strike series. How did I become such a Nerf expert? The Nerf Wiki of course. If you want to be in the know about the Deploy CS-6 then head to the Nerf Wiki page for the Deploy CS-6. If you want to be in the know about how to deploy CS6, as in how to do a mass software deployment of Creative Suite 6 using tools like the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 3.0 then mark you calendars for Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 10AM PST for the Adobe Webinar “Deploying Creative Suite 6″ with your hosts Jody Rodgers and Rick Borstein. We will cover AAMEE, the new CS6 licensing changes, and the new command line tools Remote Update Manager and the Exceptions Deployer application. We will answer questions about imaging, activation, and possibly how to get the most performance out of your Nerf blaster.

UPDATE: Webinar recording available online:

http://seminars.adobeconnect.com/p5cusn6zish/

Jody Rodgers | Sr. Product Manager | Enterprise + Volume | CS +CCM | Adobe

I’ve wanted to do a top ten list on this blog for sometime. I am sucker for those top ten articles on the internet. You know the ones “Top Ten Best Places For Real Estate In Places You Would Never Move To,” “Top Ten Worst Places For Real Estate Including Where You Live,” or “Top Ten Best Android Apps Released Between 8-10 AM This Morning.” And then you click on them and then the site annoyingly makes you click through ten separate pages so you can see ten ads. By the time you get to the 8th one you have lost interest and feel your carpal tunnel kicking in.

This is not that type of top ten. Nope. Just a list of ten awesome things about the free IT packaging tool Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 2.1. Once you get to the 8th item on this list you’ll say “I can’t stand it, I have to have it now” and you’ll stop reading and click on the download links. But wait, how can a dot release that has TEN awesome things in it? That is a lot of stuff for a dot release. Right? Well the AAMEE team is pretty much obsessed with packing in as much goodness as they can. We’ve been focused on saving IT admins time and I think this release has a lot to offer on that front.

So without further ado I bring you…
Top Ten Awesomeness of AAMEE 2.1:

1) Existing packages can be updated!
We now have a new workflow that allows you to update packages that are created with AAMEE 2.1 so that they are always up to date. If you create a package in October, you can go back and refresh the updates in that package in December. Awesome.

2) AAMEE now supports more than just the Creative Suite!
Sweet, more suites. AAMEE 2.1 fully supports Technical Communication Suite 3.5 and has limited support for eLearning Suite 2.5 and Acrobat X Suite. Awesome.

3) No more merging of DVD images!
Some folks download the Creative Suite from the Adobe Licensing Website (LWS) as one single large image. Others get it other ways including from resellers and have to take the physical discs and then create images of them and then go through a convoluted and time consuming process of merging them. Merge no more my friends as we now support multiple disc inputs, both physical or iso/dmg. Awesome.

4) Preferences!
Those who have never used AAMEE or have created lots of packages with AAMEE may not think that preferences as a category are not worthy of my gratuitous and carefree use of exclamation marks, but trust me. Prior to 2.1 there were no saved preferences. Now AAMEE automatically remembers your preferences for things including the package name, save to location, Installer location and best yet all the options you select on the Configure Package screen are now all saved after you quit and reopen AAMEE. A big time saver if you have to create multiple packages in a row. Awesome.

5) Never quit AAMEE again!
Another time saver for sure. Now after you are finished building a package you will see a New Package button that takes you back to the start of the workflow process. It is kind of an infinitive loop. Why would you need this? Well let’s say you had to break down the Master Collection into 14 separate application packages. Before, you would have to open AAMEE 14 times. Combined with the fact that we now have preferences this dreadfully laborious task would be, well, still dreadfully laborious. But overall, quicker. Awesome.

6) Support for Apple Mac OS 10.7 Lion!
You can now happily use AAMEE 2.1 to create packages on your 10.7 system knowing it has been tested and vetted by the AAMEE crew. Awesome.*
*See the Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion doc for the latest on compatibly with the products and 10.7.

7) Support for Apple Remote Desktop 3.5!
Want to create packages with AAMEE 2.1 and then push them out to systems using ARD 3.5? Of course you do. And you can sleep well at night knowing it is supported. Awesome.

8 ) Filter updates by name!
We’ve added a Search by Product option in the Updates section of AAMEE 2.1. There are a ton of updates and sifting through them can be a little daunting. Now in the Updates screen simply type in the Product name and get instant results of what updates are available for that product. Awesome.

9) AAMEE 2.1 is thinking about its demise!
“Ever since the XP-38 came out, they just aren’t in demand.” Wether its landspeeders or packaging tools eventually things become obsolete. As exciting and shiny as AAMEE 2.1 is today, we have to come to grips that one day there will be an AAMEE 2.2 or an AAMEE 3.0. And AAMEE 2.1 has come to terms with this and starting with this version it will do a search at launch to see if a new version is available and announce its own redundancy. Awesome.

10) ExceptionInfo.txt file now includes commands!
Okay, so maybe I front loaded this list a bit and now the end of the list is looking rather thin. There maybe there is some truth to that. But if you are a Mac admin and having to deploy items from the Exceptions folder you probably don’t want to have to go to a website just to get the command line text for deployment, right? Why not put it in the doc that is in the Exceptions folder? We did. See? Even this last one falls under the category of: Awesome.

So there you go, ten solid reasons to click on the links below and start using AAMEE 2.1. We also have a new Read Me that includes more on these new features and a list of known issues. And we are continually updating and revising the CS5/CS5.5 Enterprise Deployment Guide that explains how to use AAMEE, APTEE, AUSST and more.

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition 2.1 (Windows)
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/creativesuite/AAMEE/win/ApplicationManagerEnterprise_2_1_all.exe

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition 2.1 (Mac)
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/creativesuite/AAMEE/mac/ApplicationManagerEnterprise_2_1_all.dmg

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

Not sure how, but I failed to announce the recent release of JAMF’s newly updated tech paper “Simplifying Adobe CS5 and CS5.5 Administration with the Casper Suite” document. This has been updated for CS 5.5 and AAMEE 2.x.:

http://jamfsoftware.com/solutions/adobe-creative-suite/

Speaking of JAMF, they are holding their National User Conference this November in Minneapolis. Spoiler Alert: I’m totally going to be there. I’ll be the one with the AAMEE shirt on. And if you see me the next day, I’ll be the one with a slightly less clean AAMEE shirt on. (I’m packing light.)

I’ve never been to Minneapolis and I am excited. Home to some cool tech places, like my friends at Code 42 and (of course) JAMF. But also home to some of my all time musical faves: The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Prince. One of my favorite design shops, Aesthetic Apparatus, is there. Plus Minneapolis has a neighborhood called Dinkytown. How awesome is that? Hope to see some of you there!

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/events/user-conferences/national-user-conference-2011/

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

The 2.0 version of Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (or AAMEE so that I do not get carpal tunnel from typing the full name) is available directly for downloading for the Adobe DevNet site. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html In addition to this release the 2.0 version of the Adobe Update Server Setup Tool (AUSST) is now available for download as well. More about AUSST in a bit.

AAMEE 2.0

The team has been hard at work to create a new version of AAMEE that supports the new CS 5.5 release but also supports CS 5.0 media and 5.0 updates. The two big new features of AAMEE are: 1) in-app updates and 2) support for Acrobat X with CS 5.5 media.

I am really excited about the in-app updating, so excited that I already blogged about it, basically stealing my own thunder as it were. But seriously, it was a pain to leave AAMEE and go then go to the CS Updates blog and download the updates and then manually add them. Right? Right. And how on earth could you possibly know if all those updates were interrelated to the applications you were deploying? Do you a PHD in Adobe Updateology? Me neither, and I work here. This is why the team delivered the ability in this new version to have AAMEE query Adobe’s external update server for you. You pick the applications you are creating the package for on the Updates screen and then it shows you the updates related to that update. Then you can download them from within AAMEE and build your core application package with the latest updates or if you are creating just an update package of CS applications it is up to date. What if you are creating more than one package? AAMEE caches the updates so they can be repurposed.

Also on the topic of updates, if you have been deploying the video products you will want to check out the section of the Deployment Guide called “Difference between Product Update Names for DVD and Electronic Software Distribution—Combination Package” to explain why you might be seeing updates labeled Trial even if you did not download a trial CS installer or even if your software was serialized. This involves esoteric things such as licensed content, templates, ESDs, and other things you might know if you had that PHD in Adobe Updateology or if you were Todd Kopriva.

A great aspect of working with the CS 5.5 media is that it comes with Acrobat Pro X on the same disc or disc image. And AAMEE 2.0 supports it. Progress! Before I get carried away with my exclamation marks I should sober myself with visualizing the long series of asterisk marks this topic deserves as there are indeed a decent amount of caveats with deploying and updating Acrobat Pro X as part of CS 5.5. Please check out the “Deploying Adobe Acrobat” section of the Deployment Guide and ESPECIALLY the “Handling Feature Lockdown on Mac OS after Applying Updates” subsection if you are deploying Acrobat X out to Macs as part of an AAMEE package. I know it isn’t pretty. What is not in the doc, specific to Acrobat Pro X, is that on the Mac you also need to mac sure you are deploying the package out to the right OS. For instance, if you are using a North American English CS 5.5 serial you will run into trouble deploying this out to a Mac that has their OS language set to Swedish. That is a bit of an edge case, but if you run into this let us know and we’ll have some workarounds.

AUSST 2.0

AUSST allows you setup a local update server to house your Adobe CS updates on your own server. If your users are admins you can save a lot of bandwidth from having them pull the updates locally instead of from Adobe’s servers. I pronounce AUSST similar to “cost” sans the “c” of course, or like saying the city of Austin without the “in” part. Trust me, saying the full names or even the five letters of these five name IT tools in full gets old real fast.

Now that we got the pronunciation out of the way, let’s talk about what’s new with AUSST 2.0. Primarily and most importantly it provides support for the forthcoming CS 5.5 updates. So if you are an organization using the current version of AUSST and are about to migrate to 5.5 or will have a mixed environment of 5.0 and 5.5 users you will want to upgrade right away. For clarification, if you are running an update server setup with AUSST 2.0 it will support both 5.0 and 5.5 updates.

Along with the release we have a completely new documentation for AUSST. We heard your feedback loud and clear about the documentation and have effectively rebooted the documentation. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new documentation as a lot of time was spent on re-visioning it. We want to continually improve these docs so that getting started with an update server is straightforward.

What does AUSST 2.0 not do? Well the biggie that is not yet implemented is the ability to send out command line requests to the AUSST server to push out updates to end users. We are looking into this and other feature requests for a future version of AUSST.

Note: AUSST 2.0 is part of the AAMEE 2.0 install. The location for the various operating systems is on Page 15 of the Deployment Guide. It is also available as a separate download on the Adobe DevNet site

Please keep in touch. We read every single comment. Even the spam comments.

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite

In our continuing effort to improve IT admins’ lives (cue inspiring dramatic music) we are pleased to announce another partnership with a deployment vendor, Symantec. Symantec acquired Altiris is 2007 and through that now has a powerful set of client and server management tools know as the Symantec Management Platform. Working with Symantec has been great and the first fruits of our labor is the online documentation “Using Client Management Suite to Deploy Adobe CS5” and shows a walkthrough starting out with creating a package with Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (aka AAMEE.) We are also working with them on making it easier to identify and manage our software through the use of ISO 19770-2 software tagging, but that is probably the subject for another blog post about what we are doing on that front. In fact, that is probably enough on that subject for a whole series of blog posts in regards to software tagging.

Thanks again to Kyle Champlin and all the folks at Symantec who are helping make life for our combined customers easier!

I recently came home with a new food product from my local grocery store. It was some sort of vegetarian fake-chicken kiev frozen food. I wasn’t exactly sure why I had decided to try it out but I noticed when I was at home that it had a large shiny sticker on the front of the packaging that read: As Seen On TV. This seems like such a vague way to market your product these days. I mean, just because it was on TV doesn’t imply that it is good, right? And in this day and age where there are a million cable channels how hard is it to be on TV? There is probably a frozen food cooking channel these days. Actually there probably isn’t but that would be a good idea. A whole channel dedicated to those too busy or lazy to cook. Sadly, I am in the middle of that Venn diagram.

Speaking of TV, did you know Adobe has a channel? Before you grab your remote I should clarify it is on the internet. The inertnet! You know, where cats who play piano can truly shine. Adobe TV is actually a great resource for our products and we now have our own Creative Suite in the Enterprise show! Our first episode is something near and dear to my heart: Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition, aka AAMEE! Check out the “Deploying CS5 with AAMEE” episode here, complete with a commercial(!?!) at the start:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-suite-in-the-enterprise/deploying-cs5-with-aamee/

We’re working on additional training content, but we’d love to hear what you’d like to see or general feedback about our venture into the online video training world.

And now you have no excuse but to download and try out AAMEE today, because it has been seen on TV!

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager| Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite

Hi all,

A big thank you to all who attended our discussion at Macworld. It was really fruitful for us at Adobe. We got to meet many folks face-to-face and lots of great issues arose.

One topic that came up from an attendee was the inability to find instructions for installing Font Folio. I did a few searches online and also couldn’t find good instructions. Reaching out to the font team internally today, they pointed me to these instructions:

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/fontinstall/instructions_english.html

Hopefully this helps those who had questions about the Font Folio.

AAMEE and the Suites, phonetically this could sound a bit like “Amy and the Sweets” which would of made a great female pop group name in the early 1960s. Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition, aka AAMEE is frequently pronounced like the name Amy. I personally use the äm pronunciation (like Guam) so as not confuse our product name or team with a person. “Bundling CS updates, AAMEE can do that.” which invariably leads to: “Amy who? Why isn’t she at this meeting?”

That was quite the digression. Actually I hadn’t really even started had I? Thankfully everyone only skims my posts, right? Let’s start over:

Adobe loves suites! It’s true. There is the Creative Suite of course, and now there is the Acrobat X Suite, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, eLearning Suite, Technical Communication Suite and since I started typing this there is now the Online Marketing Suite. Really, we love suites. And it makes sense, we are a solutions company, and as awesome as our stand-alone products and services are, you really get your value when they are bundled with other products and services.

A lot of the new suites with desktop applications are actually using the same installer technology that was developed for the Creative Suite, which is what AAMEE was built to parse, configure and output into a pkg or msi. Knowing this, you might assume that you could use AAMEE with something like the Acrobat X Suite or the new Technical Communication Suite. Sadly, this is not the case. AAMEE 1.2 currently ONLY works with Creative Suite 5.0 media and CS updates. It is a technical and classic “not enough hours in the day” issue. And for you, Joe IT Admin (hey Joe!) you might want to say “But I want one Adobe configuration and packaging tool to rule them all.” And I, appreciating your Tolkien reference and the pure logic you are invoking, will make sure it is something to focus on in 2011. However, I must be honest, it isn’t going to happen right away and I recommend figuring out clever ways to deploy these other suites without the use of AAMEE and would love to hear about how you did so.

Feel free to leave use the comments to let us know how this impacts your deployment projects, time, etc. Don’t worry, I have thick skin; I use to be a Mac IT admin in a Windows-shop mind you. And Eric Wilde, let’s just say he has read ALL of the Growl-related comments.

Jody Rodgers | Product Manager| Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite