DISQUS

Pran Kurup · 1 year ago

Adobe is the perfect company to plunge into this, albeit a little late. The argument that their platform was built for online unlike traditional apps that are desktop apps to start with, is very valid. Commenting is an area where all the current solutions are no good -- neither intuitive nor user-friendly. MS is starting to do some cool things in this area (partly in desperate attempt to hold on to their MS-Office monopoly).

The downside to Adobe is that most of their solutions plug PDF or flash in some form or shape. In that sense its not exactly open, though PDF and flash are fairly ubiquitous. But if Adobe can provide a better solution overall (which I think they are best equipped to do), then it can be the start of something truly new and innovative.

Justin · 1 year ago

The company that dominates the online office space will be the one that combines a strong core offering with a robust plug-in architecture so outside firms can both build out features and connect these systems to other services. The value of these suites over traditional desktop offerings will lie in their ability to encourage other services to build around them.

The potential here is to be the firm that successfully delivers on the promise of moving from the metaphor of the document on the desktop to a notion of documents as collaborative, interactive, and dynamic stores of information. Conversations rather than artifacts.

Eric Eldon · 1 year ago

Justin, totally agree. In fact, I was just about to write a post related to that.

Don Jones - VentureDeal · 1 year ago

It would seem that the online office market is attracting more of the big players. I imagine the Zoho's of the world may get squeezed...

Anthony Ha · 1 year ago

Yes, that seems like a real possibility, although I imagine the execs Zoho disagree, at least publicly ...

Berto · 1 year ago

My company just switched to Acrobat.com for some worldwide training. The tools allow us to use their VoIP rather than having a ton of people calling into a big conference call which racks up cost per minute while using Microsoft LiveMeeting in conjunction.

It works great. The flash-based app works on all browsers and on my Linux box too. The biggest issue is getting people who want to respond to the trainers to hook a microphone to the PC -- but most people just ask questions into the public chat box.

I'm a fan of this product and hope Adobe takes another bite out of Microsoft's platform.

Anthony Ha · 1 year ago

Whoa, cool!