BIOS: Technology Means Business

Adobe Systems (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate commercial availability of Adobe Acrobat Connect, the first hosted Web conferencing service to offer ‘always-on’ personal meeting rooms.

Acrobat Connect enables knowledge workers to instantly meet and conduct business online through real-time, interactive Web conferencing that is simple to access and easy to use.

“The feedback from users during our Acrobat Connect trial the past few months has been overwhelmingly positive. It has reinforced our belief that the product stands apart from traditional web conferencing solutions in terms of ease-of-use, elegance, and the instant access it provides anyone with an Adobe Flash enabled browser,” said Tom Hale, senior vice president, Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe. “Now that we’re delivering the hosted service at an extremely approachable price, we expect knowledge workers to begin making Acrobat Connect personal meeting rooms as much a part of their daily work as e-mail and the phone.”

Unlike other Web conferencing solutions, Acrobat Connect enables users to choose an easy-to-remember Web address for their online personal meeting room that is unique to them, much like a phone number or e-mail address. Accessing a personal meeting room is easy and instant, requiring little more than a Web browser and the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player software, installed on more than 97% of Internet-connected computers worldwide. Because there is no cumbersome software to download, knowledge workers can easily hold spontaneous, ad-hoc meetings that are virtually hassle-free to join.

“Working with manufacturers to ensure homes meet federal and state code requirements is a process heavily dependent on efficient and accurate communication and collaboration,” said Dennis Newman, general manager, Information Technology Services, PFS Corporation, an independent quality control, testing, certification, and evaluation agency serving the architecture, engineering and construction industry.

“Acrobat Connect helps eliminate many of the common communication problems we’ve encountered in the past. The one-button access to Acrobat Connect from Acrobat 8 enables our staff to instantly pull clients into a web-based meeting and show them first-hand where design problems exist. Ultimately, it helps speed the process of completing projects, saving both our clients and us valuable time and money.”

Acrobat Connect provides users with essential collaboration tools, such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, chat, video conferencing, and audio conferencing - all for unlimited usage for up to 15 participants for one low monthly fee. Additionally, with one-button ‘Start Meeting’ access from the Adobe Acrobat 8 software product line and free Adobe Reader 8 software, users can launch Acrobat Connect directly from a PDF document to start collaborating immediately.

For more advanced Web conferencing and collaboration needs, the Acrobat Connect product line also includes Acrobat Connect Professional software. Available as of Dec. 2006, Acrobat Connect Professional offers a highly scalable solution for wide organisational deployment that offers extensive meeting management capabilities, as well as a powerful reporting system. For online meetings and events, including large meetings of up to 2,500 participants, companies can reach target audiences virtually any time with interactive multimedia, integrated telephony, and Voice over Internet Protocol.

Organisations can deploy Acrobat Connect Professional in either an on-premise, behind the firewall configuration, or through Adobe’s hosted service. The entire Acrobat family consists of Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 8 Standard, Acrobat 8 Elements, Acrobat 3D Version 8, Acrobat Connect, and Acrobat Connect Professional.

Acrobat Connect is immediately available in English in North America for a subscription price of $39 per month, or $395 per year per personal meeting room. The product is expected to be available in French, German and Japanese language versions later in the current calendar year. For more information, visit www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect/. A free trial version of Acrobat Connect is available at www.adobe.com/go/tryconnect.

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