Adobe divides to conquer

Adobe Systems is aiming to make its Acrobat electronic publishing software a standard business tool with new versions of the product that target different classes of officer workers.

The software maker is set to announce three new versions of Acrobat and a revamped version of the free Acrobat Reader software used for viewing the portable document format (PDF) files Acrobat creates.

As expected, the new offerings include a light-duty version of Acrobat designed to let ordinary workers easily covert documents to PDF. Acrobat Elements will integrate with common applications, including Microsoft's Office, so that most documents can be converted simply by right-clicking on them.

Acrobat Elements will be accompanied by Acrobat 6.0 Standard, replacing the current version of Acrobat, and Acrobat 6.0 Professional, a new high-end edition intended for workers using complex applications such as Autodesk's AutoCAD drafting software and Microsoft's Visio diagramming and drawing software.

The goal of the product segmentation is to encourage further adoption of the already widespread PDF format, particularly as the default option for sharing documents via email and the internet, said Shantanu Narayen, executive vice president of worldwide products for Adobe. IT managers already prefer PDF for email attachments, because files in the format are smaller and can be opened on almost any type of system using the free Acrobat Reader, one of the most widely distributed PC applications in the world.

"What we've been hearing from enterprises is that they do want to standardise on PDF as the mechanism for how they share information outside the (corporate) firewall," Narayen said. "Our vision for PDF has always been focused on broad proliferation, and there's a lot of opportunity in the enterprise to achieve that... Acrobat Elements is sort of the entry point for getting enterprise to standardise on PDF. Then we can go in and show them more capabilities."

Jim Murphy, an analyst at AMR Research, said Acrobat Elements is essential for Adobe to expand Acrobat's appeal beyond publishing professionals. "It's something they have to do just from the perspective of getting business users to take advantage of the other side of Acrobat," he said. "They know about the Reader, but Adobe has to show people that can use PDF for creating documents as well as viewing them."

The company is likely to face several obstacles towards achieving that, including Adobe's reputation among laymen for producing complex, intimidating applications that can take years to master. "The image of being difficult to use is part of what they're fighting," Murphy said. "I think they struggled with whether this should have the Acrobat name or if it needs to be classified as an entirely new product."

Adobe has addressed that by limiting Elements to a relatively simple palette of commands for creating PDF files based on existing documents, with most functions available just by right-clicking within an active document.

David Becker writes for News.com