ConnectReviews

Ahead of our review of Adobe's latest version of Acrobat, version 9, we did an interview with Rick Brown at Adobe. He tells us about the Acrobat user base, how the PDF got it's start, and the roadmap of Acrobat.

1. Starting off, can you tell the ConnectReviews readers about yourself and your position at Adobe?

As the senior director for Adobe Acrobat product management, I am responsible for managing the overall Acrobat product family definition. This basically means my team is constantly working with customers to better understand their needs and use cases and then translate that into products and product features that are developed by our engineering team. We are looking at what customers need right now and also looking forward to emerging opportunities. We then help our development team turn that into products and services that allow people to work and communicate better with Acrobat and PDF.

2. How many users are currently using Acrobat products in their daily workflow? Do you see this number growing in the future?

We have shipped over 30 million cumulative, new unit licenses of Acrobat and, in the last couple years alone, distributed over 500 million copies of the free Adobe Reader. That number is growing every day. In business, the creation and exchange of documents is frequently the way people get their everyday work done. Projects and specifications are defined in documents, transactions are recorded in documents, people are informed and trained through documents, products are marketed and sold through documents, information and data are collected through documents. There is a huge opportunity going forward to make these interactions more expressive, more collaborative and more efficient, which in turn makes documents more effective while taking time and cost out of the equation.

3. Many people are now accustomed to PDF and the ease of creating PDF files for transmitting documents via e-mail. How did PDF get its start in the business?

PDF was the brainchild of Adobe founder, John Warnock, who anticipated the need for a platform independent and graphically rich portable document format. Acrobat 1.0, which was originally codenamed “Carousel,” shipped in 1993. PDF’s emergence as a standard really began a few years later in 1994 when two things happened: 1) Adobe decided to give away the Adobe Reader for free and 2) Internet usage began to explode. Suddenly, there was a widely available medium that created huge demand for portable electronic documents and related applications. Adobe was there with the right solution at the right time and the freely available Adobe Reader insured zero barrier to adoption.

The new version of Acrobat supports embedded video.

4. How do you think the Acrobat application has evolved over time, have there been any milestone releases?

Nearly every release has been a major milestone. Acrobat 2.0 was the release where we made the Adobe Reader free; Acrobat 3.0 was the release to feature integration with the browser; Acrobat 4.0 introduced key features for the expansion of PDF in electronic document applications, including forms and digital signatures. I could go on! I think Acrobat 9, which is the most recent release, is incredibly significant because it is the first release where we were able to bring some of the incredible technology assets that came via Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia. A key development has been the integration of Flash with PDF in Acrobat 9, which has completely transformed what we can do in electronic documents.

5. It's clear that Acrobat and the PDF document format is the gold standard for transmitting documents over the internet, what kind of new features in Acrobat 9 make this release even better?

As I mentioned above, the integration of Flash has been a huge leap forward in Acrobat 9. The integration of Flash with PDF’s capabilities as a packaging format enabled us to create PDF Portfolios, which make it very easy for customers to create customized user experiences around sets of related content. Not only does Flash enable customers to create custom user experiences on top of their content, it also means content can be anything supported by PDF or Flash, including native MP3 files, H.264 video, Flash animations, 3D models, interactive forms, etc. The range of content that can be represented in a single, integrated format is really incredible.

6. Can you share with us a little about the future and the vision of the Acrobat brand and the PDF format?

We have only scratched the surface of what is possible in terms of Flash and PDF integration. We believe customers will increasingly want to leverage the range of rich media that is available to them as part of their everyday communications. General business workers want to differentiate their communication and take advantage of rich media as much as graphic designers and web developers. Our goal will be to make it easy and effective. You should also look for us to leverage the growing range of hosted services we are providing through Acrobat.com. These services make it incredibly easy for general business users to create collaborative business processes around documents without any IT investment or technical expertise.

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