An Architect's View

The Adobe Hosted Services group just launched another new service: Adobe Document Center (press release). This integrates with the ability in Acrobat (or Office, via a simple plugin) to create and apply a usage policy to a document, such as limiting access to a specified list of users or for a specific duration. The Adobe Document Center displays documents to which you have applied policies and lets you track usage of each document. It also lets you change the policy applied to a document and revoke access (so you can cause an out-of-date version of a document to no longer be accessible when you issue an updated copy, for example). You can also create and modify policies directly within the Adobe Document Center itself. It's a Flex application, backed by Java code - and a number of LiveCycle components, and it also leverages the trial signup / terms of service Flex application we launched as part of Adobe Acrobat Connect a few weeks ago. You can try the Adobe Document Center for free until the end of the year (the same as with Adobe Acrobat Connect). The commercial release is expected to be available in English in early 2007 at an introductory price of $19.99 per month (or $199 per year). Additional languages will be added throughout 2007. You can see the full range of Adobe Online Services, all of which offer free trials.