Adobe hits the SAAS
trail at its Max show
Software maker outlines plans to take on Microsoft and Google
By Darryl K. Taft IN CHICAGO ment at the
Adobe systems is San Jose,
looking to expand Calif., soft-its competition ware maker.
with titans such as Micro- Share is a
soft and Google. free, online
At its Max show here document-
Oct. 1, Adobe officials sharing ser-announced the company vice, Larson
is branching out into new said. Users
areas—including word select the
processing and document documents
sharing—and bolstering they want to
its positions in other devel- share, send
opment sectors, moves a message
that will bring Adobe into t o r e c i p i -
direct competition with its e n t s , a n d
larger rivals. Kevin Lynch, d e t e r m i n e
chief software architect at whether the
Adobe, said the company f i l e s w i l l With Buzzword, Adobe is expanding its online collaboration capabilities.
is getting more into the be publicly
SAAS (software as a ser- accessible or restricted, will form the basis of a free ments they have shared or
vice) arena. he said. The service, built online service from Adobe. received in one place, post
A key to the strategy with Adobe Flex technol- However, overtime, Adobe a link to their document
is Adobe’s decision to ogy, will include a set of will offer premium online on a wiki or blog, embed
buy Virtual Ubiquity, of REST (Representational subscription services and a Flash preview of their
Waltham, Mass., and its State Transfer) APIs to let developer services based documentonany Web site,
online word processor, developers create mash- on Share, Larson said. and limit access to a docu-Buzz word. Adobe also ups with their applica- The move adds to Adobe’s ment to a list of recipients,
announced the addition of tions—including storing push into the SAAS space Adobe officials said.
a new file-sharing service. and accessing files—as and looks to compete with At the show, Andrew
Code-named Share, the well as creating thumb- the likes of Microsoft and Shebanow, an engineering
beta service will make it nails and Flash-based pre- Google. manager at Adobe, dem-easier for people to share, views of documents. With Share, users can onstrated Share, which he
publish and organize doc- The Share service can send documents without said gives users 1GB of
uments online, said Erik be integrated with Adobe’s e-mail attachments, access storage, but “it’s not just a
Larson, director of market- Acrobat Connect, which doc um ents from any- drive in the sky. This prod-ing and product manage- together with Buzzword where, view all the docu- [CONTINUED ON PAGE 18]
