Big challenges remain
But pulling off the new strategy involves a number of significant internal changes at Adobe, which until now has focused almost exclusively on shrink-wrapped software. The company needs a sales force that can negotiate licensing contracts.
Resources have to be in place for round-the-clock support. And systems integrators and consultants have to be schooled in the mechanics of the new PDF, to make it work with existing business systems such as those sold by SAP, a recent Adobe partner.
"I think they need to court more" independent software vendors, said Meta's Yockelson. "They've made a start with SAP, but they need to buddy up with a wide array of back-end software vendors.
"The bigger challenge is getting close to the developer world, getting close to the people that will have to write software to work with their stuff," Yockelson added, saying that basing the new PDF features on standard XML code is a big advantage for Adobe. "The more they can trump the XML abilities of Acrobat or the server products, the better off they'll be."
Koon said Adobe is building the support services needed, and the new enterprise sales force is getting a good response as it explains how PDF can replace pieced-together approaches to get information to and from paper documents.
"We think the opportunity for us is that we can go in there and help the CIO (chief information officer) fix these workarounds they've been dealing with for years," he said.
"We can integrate documents with their transaction systems; SAP can now be extended to customers and trading partners. We don't need to sell them any new paradigm--they already know what they need. We're just trying to get to their pain points."
There's also the small matter of Microsoft. "I think a lot of speculation around XDocs derives from the fact we haven't seen it yet," Dalton said.
"But as we know it now, it seems like a different solution for a different audience than what Adobe is doing. There's a big pie out there as far as document-intensive processes in the enterprise. I don't necessarily think that it's going to be a dogfight over a small sliver of a pie. There's a lot of room for both of these guys."
Koon agreed. "XDocs is a simple tool for routing data from basic types of forms," he said. "I don't think we're solving the same problem."
"In general, I don't see XDocs--as it's been explained--competing with PDF," agreed Direction on Microsoft's DeGroot. "It's very XML-specific and focused on getting data in and out of back-end systems. It doesn't have the abilities of PDF to lock down documents and allow things like secure digital signatures."
But DeGroot said XDocs may just be the start of a broader publishing strategy. He noted that Microsoft has already invested in final-format publishing products such as Microsoft Reader, and the company recently hired Joe Esbach, former head of Adobe's Acrobat division, as vice president of Microsoft's information worker product management group.
"I wouldn't rule out the idea that Microsoft wants to come up with software and a document format that does preserve a lot of formatting," he said.
"Microsoft really likes to be the end-to-end solution. They don't like for you to have to use somebody else's technology to achieve an end purpose, which is the way it works now when you convert a Word document to PDF for distribution."
DeGroot said the 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader in use wouldn't necessarily deter Microsoft. "This is a battle that Microsoft has fought many times before," he said.
"They've faced companies with 94 percent penetration before and eaten their lunch. WordPerfect and Lotus used to dominate their market. Netscape used to be the only game in town."
But previous Microsoft victories have been predicated on wooing mass-market users. The publishing professionals who push out PDF documents are familiar with Adobe tools, Dalton said, and are loath to change.
"It's hard to get end-users to change their toolsets," he said. "Guys who use Adobe tools to publish--Word doesn't cut much mustard with that audience. I think it's a fantasy to pretend everybody is going to be using Office in terms of enterprise publishing."
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