eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Adobe has announced Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2, a new release of the company’s enterprise software aimed at enabling businesses and governments to build applications that interact with customers and constituents across devices and channels.
Sydney Sloan, group manager for product marketing at Adobe, said LiveCycle ES2 provides a rich Internet application (RIA) framework for building customizable RIA workspaces, mobile and desktop access to critical applications, and deployment in the cloud. Enterprises can now deliver personalized experiences that connect to automated processes and embed real-time collaboration in the applications to improve customer experience and boost employee productivity, Sloan said.
Adobe will introduce LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference in Los Angeles on Oct. 5.
“Adobe LiveCycle ES2 enables enterprises to build software solutions that work the way people work, in a format that people have become accustomed to in their personal lives, with social media, mobile and consumer applications-this is key to driving business in today’s economy,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Business Productivity Business Unit, in a statement. “LiveCycle ES2 offers powerful tools and environments such as model-driven application development, self-service RIA frameworks and streamlined authoring to enable organizations to create applications that more effectively generate, capture and exchange critical information.”
“Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is an ideal complement to our business process automation efforts,” said Rainer Hahn, chief information officer for personal services at Deutsche Telekom, in a statement. “With the latest release, we anticipate even greater efficiencies in automating processes that touch our employees, partners and customers. Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is flexible and easy-to-use, enabling us to quickly transform some of our most complex business processes. This helps us better reach our business goals.”
“We’re bringing more types of applications and styles of user interface from the Flash world of the Web and social sites to the enterprise,” Sloan said.
For enterprise developers, LiveCycle ES2 integrates more tightly with Adobe’s Flash Platform and PDF technologies, enabling developers to create user-centric software that contrasts with traditionally unwieldy system-centric, enterprise software, Adobe officials said.
New Adobe application modeling technology brings higher productivity to Adobe Flex and LiveCycle developers and allows them to more efficiently write applications by reducing the amount of code and simplifying data and service integration, Adobe said. Also, a new LiveCycle ES2 plug-in for Adobe Flash Builder 4 beta lets developers more seamlessly embed LiveCycle ES2 technologies into any Flex-based application. Furthermore, the new Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service (formerly Adobe Flash Collaboration Service), a hosted service, provides developers and enterprises with a scalable solution to easily build real-time, multiuser collaboration into existing or new RIAs, Sloan said.
Adobe LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile offers access to LiveCycle ES2 from iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, allowing users to interact with tasks on the go. Adobe LiveCycle Launchpad ES2 provides easy desktop access to LiveCycle ES services, Sloan said. Users can use a simple drag-and-drop interface to create a PDF or add policies for secure document processes.
Also, the new Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 is a composite RIA framework for rapidly assembling intuitive, personalized and activity-centric RIA applications, Sloan said. Developers can extend existing enterprise applications by exposing their business logic and user interfaces into application “tiles.” Tiles are context-aware, user interface application components that can be assembled to create unified views that best suit the user’s work habits and specific needs, Adobe officials said. Users can switch between multiple tasks without losing work in progress, and can save workspaces to return to later, preserving data context on the server via an Adobe AIR desktop application.
Moreover, Sloan said Adobe is also announcing the ability for enterprise customers to deploy LiveCycle ES2 as fully managed production instances in the cloud, with 24/7 monitoring and support from Adobe, including product upgrades. LiveCycle ES2 preconfigured instances will be hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment, providing organizations with a faster deployment path and lower total cost of ownership.
Also, to further ease deployment and expedite time to value, Adobe is expanding its set of Adobe Solution Accelerators. Built on LiveCycle ES2, Adobe Solution Accelerators help enterprises kick-start project planning and prototyping, and decrease development time.
In addition to the Account Enrollment Solution Accelerator and Correspondence Management Solution Accelerator for financial services institutions, Adobe now adds Benefits and Services Delivery Solution Accelerator for government entities; Electronic Submissions Solution Accelerator for life sciences organizations; and Human Capital Applications Solution Accelerator for businesses and government entities. Adobe Solution Accelerators provide best practice methodologies, UI and process templates, and code building blocks to extend LiveCycle ES2, the company said.
Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is expected to become available before the end of 2009. The Adobe LiveCycle ES2 cloud deployment option is expected to become available in early 2010. For more information about LiveCycle ES2, go to www.adobe.com/livecycle.