Adobe Launches Acrobat Hosted Services – New Web Office Player is Here

Adobe is making a major announcement tonight — the public beta launch of Acrobat.com. No longer does the Acrobat name only mean "related to PDF." The suite of hosted tools include a word processor, PDF converter, conferencing and file storage. From the looks of it, Acrobat.com could be a competitor to parts of office suites from Google/Zoho and could also compete with document sharing tools including Docstoc and Scribd. All of the services are hosted on Acrobat.com and use the SaaS model (software-as-a-service). It’s clear that collaboration is now Adobe’s focus and this makes sense as we all move to a more connected world.

The tools offered on Acrobat.com include:

Adobe Buzzword

A word processor that allows you to share documents, comment, review, and create printer-ready document output.

Adobe ConnectNow

A conferencing tool including video, audio, text chat and desktop sharing.

Other

There’s storage in the cloud for your files along with online file sharing, PDF conversions and the ability to create embeddable documents directly from Acrobat.com. There’s also an API for extending the services listed above.

Is Acrobat.com a game changer? Certainly could be if marketed correctly. Companies (and agencies) using the suite of tools that Adobe provides will see seamless integration with these new Acrobat.com tools and should be effective in providing access to clients, customers and team members.

For Docstoc and Scribd which live on sharing documents, Acrobat could make an impact. Both Docstoc and Scribd allow you to share most formats while Acrobat requires you to convert the files first. Will this help Docstoc and Scribd keep their edge? Only time will tell but if I was in their shoes, I would be ramping up innovation within their tools.

Adam Ostrow agrees on the potential document sharing woes.

In other Adobe news, they have released version 9 of Acrobat — ranging in price from $299 to $699. Dana Wollman has more on the differences between the versions and pricing.

One of the things I find interesting is when we talk about the big Web companies, Adobe is usually not on the list. With today’s Acrobat.com launch, we might just begin to group them with the top players in the Web space and specifically in the collaboration space.