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As Adobe enters into a new round of competition with Microsoft for the hearts and minds of developers and designers, the design tools leader knows it must rely on the help of its partner ecosystem to help spread the word about Adobe’s new technologies and wizardry.
For instance, at the recent Adobe MAX 2008 conference for Adobe users and developers, Qualcomm announced the availability of a new SDK (software development kit) for Qualcomm’s new Brew Mobile Platform (Brew MP). Brew MP is a mobile operating system platform that supports handsets and mobile devices across virtually all market tiers and across all 3G technologies. The Brew MP SDK is a more open and flexible development environment that enables developers and designers to easily create innovative new applications, widgets and custom user interfaces for mass-market handsets and mobile devices.
Moreover, in addition to enhanced support for native application development, the Qualcomm SDK provides a full suite of tools and features including integrated Adobe Flash technology. This integration allows developers using Adobe’s content and Web creation tools to seamlessly author applications for Brew MP devices.
“The Brew Mobile Platform SDK bridges the gap between the mobile application and Web development communities,” said Steve Sprigg, senior vice president of engineering for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “With the Brew MP SDK, Flash developers can use familiar and powerful Adobe tools to publish compelling mobile applications quickly and easily for mass-market handsets used by mobile consumers worldwide.”
“Adobe has an extensive developer community creating rich content with Adobe Flash technology,” said Gary Kovacs, general manager and vice president, Mobile and Devices at Adobe, in a statement. “Brew MP enables Flash developers to create applications that integrate the functionality of a wide variety of devices with Web content and services. The release of the Brew MP SDK is an important milestone in achieving the vision of the Open Screen Project, of which Qualcomm is a member. It helps put us on a solid path to deliver our shared long-term vision to deliver consistent, rich experiences across all screens.”
Indeed, the Brew technology is going to help Adobe promote its Open Screen Project to enable rich experiences across a variety of screens users have in their daily lives, such as phone, desktop and TV.
Integrating with Microsoft Technologies
Meanwhile, Adobe partner Cynergy Systems announced that it has launched Cynergy Media and Entertainment Division (Cynergy ME), a new division dedicated to creating rich and immersive online experiences for the media and entertainment market. Cynergy ME provides content creators and publishers – from major studios to independents – with leading-edge software design and development services to build incredibly engaging and cinematically rich applications for streaming media, interactive gaming and social engagement, using RIA technologies such as Adobe Flex and AIR.
“To meet the needs of the evolving online media and entertainment world, you need both well designed and developed software experiences and an enterprise-class platform that is scalable enough for millions of users,” said Bryant Macy, director of product marketing at Adobe Systems, in a statement. “We’re very excited to be a part of Cynergy’s entrance into this space thanks to their proven experience in designing and building rich interactive applications, video and content. Using the Adobe Flash Platform, Cynergy can help their media and entertainment customers deliver more user value and reach the largest worldwide audience across the Web, desktops and devices.”
In addition, at Adobe MAX, Acesis, an enterprise medical review software company, today launched its Clinical Review Product Suite, which leverages the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES), for a unique combination of enterprise-class infrastructure capabilities, cross-platform reach, and expressive, easy-to-use interfaces. The software will improve patient care by automating the medical peer review process while ensuring the security and confidentiality requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Meanwhile, tapping into the world of Microsoft developers, SapphireSteel Software will soon release a Flex development IDE (integrated development environment) called “Amethyst.”
Huw Collingbourne, a spokesman for SapphireSteel, said, “Up to now we have concentrated on development tools for Ruby on Rails (our Visual Studio Ruby IDE, -Ruby In Steel’). Indeed, we were initially attracted to Flex as a means of providing enhanced Web-based -front ends’ to Rails applications. However, we soon realized that there was much more we could do to provide a general-purpose Flex environment for Visual Studio and so we decided to develop an environment which integrates Flex/AIR applications with other Visual Studio projects – potentially, everything from C# and ASP .NET to Ruby On Rails.”
Yet by concentrating exclusively on Visual Studio programmers, “Amethyst addresses a different market segment from the Eclipse-based development offered by Flex Builder,” Collingbourne said. “Put simply, it is our aim to make Flex/AIR development an easy and -natural’ alternative to WPF/Silverlight within Visual Studio.”
There you have it. A company looking to make it easier for Adobe Flex and AIR developers to build applications that integrate with Microsoft technologies.