Is there any buzz about PDF?

This blog may have a range of views on it eventually. This is just my response to what I think is happening at MAX.

The PDF world has more or less vanished from Chicago so far as I can tell. MAX has always been a Macromedia event but now appears to be Adobe wide. I have written for the WWWatford site about MAX being a continuation of Macromedia and Adobe Classic being a term for what was Adobe, including the mysterious business unit for print and classic publishing. They may have their own marketing budget but if so they are spending it very carefully.

Collaboration has always been possible through PDF if enough people have access to the software. Somehow Adobe marketing vision seems to have segmented the PDF fans into a cash cow area and projected the Flash audience into a star future.

LiveCycle so far has been frighteningly expensive. It has only been promoted to a small group of large financial organisations and government departments.

PC World reports from MAX

"People are using Web-based content to collaborate in real time," Lynch said. "We have great experience with this, with client technology like Flash. We hope to deploy this collaboration in a way that will work for everyone."

Lynch said Adobe is leveraging its dual strength in providing Web technologies, such as Flash, and software such as Adobe Acrobat for sharing and collaborating on desktop documents, to compete in this market. With Adobe's Web technologies and hosted services, companies generally don't have to install new client or server software to collaborate, another thing that differentiates Adobe from Microsoft and IBM, he said.

Ron Schmelzer, [cq] senior analyst at research firm Zapthink LLC, said Adobe is still trying to figure out its business model around its collaboration services. But it has a great opportunity to create a new way for workers to collaborate that extends what competitors are doing.

"They're not trying to reproduce the word processor. They're trying to create a new model that changes the whole concept of sharing documents and collaborating with other people online," he said. "This market is theirs to capture."

Well, ok, but the PDF approach so far has been that companies have to install a lot of very expensive software on both client and server. The Acrobat Reader has long contained many features that are kept turned off until the server sends a suitable message. Maybe this was just part of a previous model. Macromedia Contribute was priced at a seat level such that it was not an option for most sites.

LiveCycle seems to be moving in a direction where both Flash and PDF will be included. It remains to be seen how affordable it will be. Perhaps collaboration will be possible through a range of business models.