New York — About one year ago, Adobe, The San Jose-based company has developed tools for creating cloud-based productivity suite, while intensifying its focus the company on Monday said that it will move its Acrobat.com Web-based productivity and collaboration services out of beta and offer for-fee subscriptions to provide what the company hopes will be a new way for business users to collaborate on document creation and added a beta version of its new online spreadsheet, Tables.
Adobe’s Acrobat.com site currently boasts Buzzword for documents and ConnectNow for meetings, in addition to the newly intorduced experimental Presentations software. Now the company also will incorporate a spreadsheet service called “Acrobat Tables,” which goes into preview release on Monday, said Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management for Acrobat.com.
The New Acrobat.com:
Adobe has been working hard since it launched Acrobat.com in 2008. The result is Acrobat.com lineup is now officially out of beta today, and while the online apps can be used for free, Adobe will also start selling subscriptions with support — but only initially in North America.
Acrobat.com is segmented into several sub-products. Here is how the new line-up looks as of today:
Buzzword: Acquired by Adobe in 2007, is similar to that of Microsoft Word. It is a full-featured, collaboration document-building tool. It looks and feels slick, as it runs entirely in flash.
ConnectNow: ConnectNow is a tool for running virtual meetings, sharing desktops, and presenting PowerPoints virtually. It is similar to GoToMeeting.
Create PDF/Share: Exactly as it says, it is a tool to create and share PDF files.
Presentations: Released May 27th, Presentations is a beta tool for collaboratively building presentations with up to 20 people.
Spreadsheets: Released today, Acrobat.com’s Spreadsheets tool allows multiple users to create a fully-functional spreadsheet or excel document.
The major features of all these tools is that they run in flash, focus on deep business collaboration, have tools to assure that collaboration is done in real-time to avoid people editing each other’s work, and provide a full range of tools needed to meet business needs.
Adobe is offering two subscription levels for Acrobat.com — Premium Basic and Premium Plus. Both are available as either a monthly or annual subscription, Larson said.
The basic level is US$14.99 a month or $149 a year and includes conversion to PDF for 10 documents a month, as well as the ability to hold Web meetings with up to five participants. The plus level costs $39 a month or $399 a year, and offers unlimited PDF conversions and Web meetings for up to 20 participants. Adobe offers telephone and Web support for both subscription levels, Larson said. A special introductory promotion that lasts until July 16 will give customers $15 off the annual plan and $50 off the plus plan, he added.