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Adobe has launched Acrobat.com Workspaces, a new collaboration space that enables teams inside and outside of organizations to work together on projects.
Rick Treitman, director of product management for Acrobat.com, said with Workspaces, team members can store and organize project content online, and easily share and manage team access to files-eliminating the need to continually e-mail updates.
Acrobat.com is a set of hosted services that facilitate internal and external collaboration between individuals and teams. In just a few clicks, people can create Workspaces, store and share documents, and convert files to PDF, said Mangesh Bhandarkar for Acrobat.com. Teams can also meet in real time and share their screens using Adobe ConnectNow, or create documents and tables with online office applications, such as Buzzword and Acrobat.com Tables. And as with all of the Acrobat.com services, Workspaces are built on the Adobe Flash Platform and operate inside a Web browser. Apart from the Adobe Flash Player, no additional software installation is required, which makes it easy and convenient for teams to start collaborating.
Treitman said Acrobat.com was launched in June 2008 as a set of free and paid services-with paid subscriptions coming in June 2009. To date, there have been more than 10 million signups, with 100,000 new ones each week, he said.
Teams can create Shared Workspaces to store and share a set of files related to a project, letting distributed team members work together across time zones and firewalls, with no special file sharing software or IT involvement necessary, Bhandarkar said. Workspaces help increase the productivity of project teams by letting members efficiently work together through central, easy-to-use Workspaces.
Moreover, users simply access an online Workspace to review and collaborate on documents. Workspace administration privileges can be assigned to specific team members to help maintain control over who has what level of access to each project’s documents. Each individual also has his or her own Personal Workspace on Acrobat.com to store and work on documents before they are ready to be shared with a broader team.
Acrobat.com users can create one free Shared Workspace, while Premium Basic subscribers can create 20 Workspaces and Premium Plus subscribers can create an unlimited number of Workspaces. The basic Acrobat.com service is free, the Premium Basic subscription is $14.99 a month or $149 a year, and the Premium Plus subscription is $39 a month or $390 a year. For more information on Acrobat.com Workspaces, go to blogs.adobe.com/acom.