I had not talked with Adobe for a year or so, and thought it was time. So I got Peter Ryce (product manager) on the phone and got caught up. Adobe has increased their head count in India which was part of their long term plan to keep a tool management in one geogrpahic region, so tools like Adobe Presenter are managed outof India, while Connect is still managed in San Jose.

Since Citrix Online has a new e-learning product ( GotoTraining) in beta and currently free (due out this month). I asked Adobe if they would be firing a counter salvo. They talked about WebCast Studio that can be used to do live application sharing, something that is important for elearning but many web conferencing vendors don't have. They also talked about Universal Voice, which allows Adobe Connect, like IBM SameTime, to connect to any audio platfiorm you or your enterprise is currently using.

Adobe just posted a mobile app for Connect a week ago, which I and 12K other people have downloaded to their iPhones. It allows you to take part in an Adobe Connect meeting from your phone, very cool! A lot to squeeze into the small real estate the iPhone provides. Take a look at Persony, they showed me a similar application on the iPhone about a year ago.

For the last few years Adobe Connect has experienced 2.5X growth and that is also expected this year.  They currently have 6 server clusters to support Connect Online and will be adding 3 more clusters this year. Adobe claims to have 10,000 customers using Connect, and some of the larger ones like SAP have 60K licenses and DISA (govt.) has 300,000 licenses.

Although Adobe has a Flash player that deals with 3D, a more pressing issue has been HD video. I believe there may be new announcements from the Connect team this month or next.

Connect is one of the best web conferncing + tools I have used (and I have tried hundreds) it has great
functionality, not always thrilled about the price, but you do get value for money.

David Coleman, Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies, has been involved with groupware, collaborative technologies, and knowledge management since 1989. He is a frequent public speaker, an industry analyst, and author of books and magazine articles on electronic collaboration and knowledge management. David can be reached by e-mail at: davidc@collaborate.com. Follow David on Twitter.