SourceCode Dev: Adobe Connect 8 Merges Cloud and Conferencing for Enterprise

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

For August, our regular SourceCode column will focus on developers and software designed to run on mobile devices. We feel that this is a crucial part of the technology ecosystem and to be able to get an in-depth look at the challenges of software creation helps us get an idea of how engineers and devs meet today's demands.

First on the list is software giant Adobe who has transcended beyond the creative tools it is known for and expanded into the cloud and communication managed services market with Adobe Connect 8, their enterprise level conferencing solution.

During this interview, we actually joined the conference through our BlackBerry PlayBook while on the phone, The interface on the PlayBook showed realtime video conferencing, a chat pod, a slideshow as well as the ability for the host to run video all participant could view. This is possible because Adobe Connect is built on Flash and doesn't require numerous plugins from participants since this is all managed at the source.

We spoke with Michael Londgren, director, product marketing for the Adobe Connect Team and Mitch Nelson, director, managed services for Adobe and discussed their recently released services. Adobe connect offers enterprise grade hosted services to such clients as Kaplan, SAP, Xerox and the US Department of Defence.

"It is really interesting right now, we’re seeing rapid adoption (of Adobe Connect Managed Services) specially within the enterprise sector," relates Michael Londgren, who tells us that the service has experienced explosive growth.

Michael Londgren - Adobe's Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Connect"We’re delivering our managed services offering and seeing explosive growth of hosted minutes delivered 225 Million minutes a month," Londgren says.

Adobe Connect may not yet be as popular as Cisco's WebEx but it has already managed to convince some marquee clients.

The US Department of Defense and Defense Information Systems Agency who provides solutions to the US armed forces uses Adobe Connect extensively for collaboration, e-learning, emergency response and in-theatre communications are standardized on Adobe Connect.

"Many of our customers have expressed strong interest in an Adobe Connect cloud offering that combines the best features of a hosted solution with those of an on premise deployment," explains Mitch Nelson director, managed services for Adobe.

"It is at the intersection of the best of hosted and on premise deployment options where a cloud solution really shines for many customer," he adds.

Enterprise customers subscribing to  Adobe Connect  managed versions do not get software that needs to be installed on their own hardware.

 Adobe installs that code for the company on a data cluster and provides the end-to-end solutions as needed. While targeted to enterprise customers, this is also valuable for medium-sized businesses who don't want the hassle of running and managing their own servers for this puprose.

For some customers who require onsite installations, "they have the option to Install the system on their own premise,” Nelson explains.

One customer, Kaplan, who manages massive educational training and testing facilites began as hosted solution customers.

“The system we have is a great solution of small and medium businesses. We have a number of firms like Kaplan but they have put a large portion of their business on Connect. They started on the hosted side and are now going to the managed services side,” Nelson reveals.

“Targeting this more at the enterprise and the government opportunity we see these meet the need of  firms looking for the benefits of Adobe running the infrastructure but also want the in premise customizations," he says of the recently launched Adobe Connect Managed Services (ACMS).