Acrobat 8 will help stretched businesses jump through hoops
1 min read
After months of beta testing and enthusiastic reviews, Adobe’s Acrobat 8 software is now on general release with a raft of new tools aimed at helping companies to communicate and collaborate more efficiently across boundaries of operating systems, applications and firewalls.
Early users say Acrobat 8 won’t disappoint. It’s been developed specifically to enable even more opportunities to harness information in PDF documents and forms for other purposes, and to more reliably and securely help drive business processes, via the free Adobe Reader software.
Industry leaders like Caterpillar and Eaton Corporation have already given it the thumbs up, saying that it does indeed assist and enable communication and collaboration inside and outside their organisations.
“Design and construction processes are notorious for being inefficient and paper-intensive,” says John Moebes, director of Construction, Crate & Barrel. “We need tools like Acrobat 8 and PDF that act as force multipliers, enabling one person to do a job that previously might require several people.
“For instance, with advances in Acrobat 8, many design and construction documents can now be combined into a single, more secure PDF package and delivered in seconds nationwide to project teams that can review, comment on and digitally sign materials simply using Adobe Reader.”
It’s another profound development from Adobe, with significant implications for the way manufacturing companies function and interoperate – providing the potential to accelerate the flow of business by allowing people to re-use information in real time.
Users that also go for Adobe’s Acrobat Connect hosted service – the web conferencing and collaboration system providing always-on personal ‘meeting rooms’, now being offered on free trial – will see the full benefit.
Acrobat Connect enables knowledge workers to meet instantly online using a web browser interface and Adobe Flash Player software. It provides another seriously useful extension – enabling people, wherever they are, to work together and comfortably, also in real time.
Acrobat 8 Professional for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and Acrobat 8 Standard for Windows, are immediately available in English, French, German, and Japanese language versions. List price is $449.
