Adobe is launching another offensive into the online office collaboration market with a new addition to its Acrobat.com service that lets groups of users share virtual workspaces.
Acrobat.com features Buzzword, a competitor to Google Docs. ConnectNow, a tool for running virtual meetings, sharing desktops, and presenting PowerPoints virtually. Create PDF/Share, a tool to create and share PDF files. Presentations, a tool for collaboratively building presentations. Finally, Spreadsheets: allowing multiple users to create a fully-functional spreadsheet or excel document.
Workspaces, as you would expect, tie many of the other services together. With this new tool, Adobe says you can easily share and collaborate on a set of documents with individuals or teams. You can share files and work towards getting projects completed with others outside of your organization, especially when compared to dealing with multiple e-mail threads with different file attachments.
“Instead of sharing documents one-by-one, you can simply create a Shared Workspace to which each of your collaborators will be granted access. When you add a file to the Workspace, it is automatically made available to anyone that you have invited to be a part of that Workspace.”
Source: Acrobat.com
Adobe’s last big update to Acrobat.com was a complete interface overhaul, which took place back in November. According to the company, some 10 million users have signed up for the service, with around 100,000 new sign-ups per week. Adobe would not, however, go into detail about what percentage of those users were using its paid services, which the company launched last June.
