Adobe Servers To Lean On Acrobat Reader

The first, Adobe Document Server, extracts information from existing enterprise systems to generate customized PDF documents, such as contracts, sales materials or financial statements.

The second, Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions, assigns usage rights to documents by using features embedded in Acrobat Reader 5.1. Those functions include support for digital signatures, access to a tool for attaching comments to a document and the ability to save a form to the desktop for offline completion and submission.

Both servers will be available by the end of November at $10,000 per CPU, said Shawn Cadeau, director of product management at Adobe, based here. The company is targeting financial services, government and manufacturing markets with the offerings, he said.

Adobe also plans to release in December rebranded versions of the eForms apps it gained when it acquired Accelio in April. Rebranded versions of Adobe Form Server, Adobe Workflow Server and Adobe Output Server will feature tighter integration with Adobe's PDF technology. They also will be priced at $10,000 per CPU.

The company recently put in place a three-tiered partner program that draws on elements of Accelio's channel program, Cadeau said.

"We think there is incredible potential here," said Christian Pease, director of channel sales at Burntsand, an e-business integration firm in Toronto, referring to Adobe's server software.

Stellent, an Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Adobe OEM partner and enterprise content management vendor, is integrating Adobe Document Server into its platform, said Dean Berg, director of business development. Stellent had developed its own server for assembling and managing PDF files, but now it won't have to support that technology because Adobe's offering is richer, he said. "There's a lot of additional capability we didn't provide," Berg said.