Adobe documents its plans for the future

Adobe's Acrobat Reader application is one of the most ubiquitous software programs in the world, and the supplier's PDF format has become a de facto standard for electronic publishing.

But with the proliferation of paperwork and documentation in businesses - whatever happened to the paperless office? - the company is looking to expand its foothold beyond Acrobat.

Computing talked exclusively to Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen about his plans.

Where is Adobe heading?
We have three opportunities: to continue to add value to the creative professional; to take advantage of the transformation of visual photography; and Adobe's biggest opportunity, to help organisations with their document processes.

Document process management goes from reliably delivering and interacting with documents, to integrating this data back into your workflow. We provide an intelligent document platform built around the Adobe Acrobat Reader - and there's more than half-a-billion of them out there.

We provide a number of document generation, collaboration and workflow applications. These allow organisations to work in both an ad hoc and a structured fashion: ad hoc using Acrobat on the desktop, more structured using a series of server-based products which also provide business intelligence, leveraging XML throughout the workflow.

We've a whole business unit built around intelligent document business. In the last quarter it grew 42 per cent year-on-year and now represents more than a third of our revenue. That, we believe, will be our fastest-growing long-term business and certainly our largest.

What new areas are you going into?
First, the creative professional. Instead of being a point product business we now offer a platform - the creative suite - that includes individual point products but also has value-adds for workroom project management for the creative professional.

Second, our Photoshop line of products has become a platform unto itself and is beginning to extend into other areas. We're looking at adding services, perhaps tieing it in more seamlessly with photo-finishing, or doing more around photo storage.

Third, document and document services. Today we offer document generation, collaboration, rules and workflow. You can expect us to get more aggressive in document security.

What are the main threats to achieving these aims?
We've focused on regulatory industries - financial services, banking, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, legal, health and government.

We have a unique value proposition because we're the only ones who have the key to that free Adobe Reader. People can build competitive products but our knowledge and experience with PDF goes back 10 or 15 years.

Our biggest challenge is an internal one. We have a great opportunity to sell mission-critical applications to enterprise companies - a new opportunity for Adobe.

We've proven in the past that we can transform the company. We went from selling PostScript and operating systems for print manufacturers to providing shrink-wrapped software to many users. The change that Adobe went through to do that was significant.

We've been working on this for a couple of years and made significant progress. That's why we're getting customers such as the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs, and Toyota in the UK.

Our biggest competitor is custom development. If you look at an organisation such as Pfizer, it built a PDF workflow leveraging an Oracle database to do clinical trials. It did that work itself without using off-the-shelf tools.

We can provide other pharmaceutical companies with server-based products which will allow them to do similar custom development, at a much lower cost.

How do you intend to spread your influence around the market?
First, we make sure we have the right people in place. Then we begin to get strategic relationships with important software vendors. We quickly established a relationship with SAP. We've announced we will be embedded in its next platform, so NetWeaver will probably include some pieces of Adobe technology.

We also announced an important relationship with IBM Software. It relies on us for its document services for both its Content Manager and WebSphere platforms. We've had a relationship with Documentum, now EMC, for a number of years. In some cases we've established, and in others solidified, our software relationships.

We've started working with some of the more important systems integrators. Given Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's involvement with the Inland Revenue, that's certainly an important relationship. We've established a relationship with Accenture in some parts of the world, IBM Global Services and others.

What sort of company do you think Adobe is becoming?
We have grown without moving away from our mission, which is to develop software to help people and organisations communicate better.

We managed to move from a point product company to a true platform company - the platform for the creative professional with a creative suite, a la Microsoft Office, a platform for photographers, and a line of products and platform for those who want to enhance their document processes, built around an intelligent document platform. That really puts us on a different plateau than we've ever been on before.