Previous | Next | (P-PDF) Acrobat 6.0

Topic: Dynamic Form Creation
Conf: (P-PDF) Acrobat 6.0, Msg: 85835
From: jann
Date: 4/9/2003 08:28 PM

Think you've just asked a $64,000 question, Heather.

Early days I know, but it would appear that after years of touting PDF Forms as being easy to use technology (every demo I've been to, even the non-techy ones, featured an over-excited Adobe employee running through those phoney Synchros forms) they have finally admitted defeat and are only including creation tools in their top price, niche (?) product.

I'm a fan of Acrobat forms - every company I show them to have been keen to know more. Until I tell them that Adobe never got it together to offer a modestly priced, turnkey server solution for their use. Frankly, the fact that Adobe assumed that every office had its resident CGI expert that could make the forms work is an indication of how far removed Adobe marketing people are from the real world.

So now it looks like Forms creation will be repositioned as being for the big boys only. In which case this wonderful opportunity has just been flushed down the pan. (Adobe seem to specialise in doing this kind of thing...)

Interestingly I see that Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server - a rather under-promoted but clever piece of software which effectively creates an easy-to-use document repository and more - is being repositioned as part of the Office product line, possibly preparing it for more wide-scale marketing.

If I were Microsoft, I'd include their admittedly vague Forms solution as part of this new 'server' and price it aggressively. Fully searchable document management and automated forms processing in a single box - can't see many companies going for that, can you? :O) This little manoeuvre would stop Adobe's corporate PDF strategy in its tracks.