Adobe announced during this year’s MAX conference that it will acquire Waltham, Massachusetts -based software company Virtual Ubiquity, the maker of online word processor Buzzword.
The financial terms of the acquisition, expected to be completed by the end of November 2007, were not disclosed. The link between Adobe Systems and Virtual Ubiquity is the Adobe Flex platform, owned by the former and used by the latter as a tool for creating Buzzword, which is a Web-based word processor that runs in any browser with the help of the Adobe Flash Player. According to the press statement, Adobe will integrate the new product in its existing suite of rich Internet application (RIA) offerings built on the AIR platform.
“For over a decade, Adobe Acrobat software and PDF have been the standard way people share and collaborate on high value documents across platforms, with perfect fidelity. Buzzword will build on that leadership and enable fundamental improvements in how people collaborate on documents,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Business Productivity Business Unit at Adobe. “At the same time, it is an exciting showcase of the power of Adobe’s RIA technology that raises the bar for the quality of experience people should expect in their applications.”
Adobe lauds Virtual Ubiquity’s product by saying: “Buzzword enables greater document quality, outstanding typography, page layout controls, and robust support for integrated graphics, regardless of the browser or device. The application also will run on Adobe AIR, offering users a hybrid online/offline experience and the ability to work with both hosted and local documents. The powerful collaboration capabilities in Buzzword enable multiple authors to edit and comment on documents from anywhere, at anytime, while document creators can set permissions that virtually eliminate version control chaos.”
On the official Virtual Ubiquity blog, the company members stated that the ownership modification will not affect beta-testers’ documents already stored on the servers: “You will access Buzzword and your documents as you always have, though we [Virtual Ubiquity] now have a cool alternative.” This refers to the integration of VU’s staff into the large family of Adobe Systems, whose more than 6,000 employees scattered all over the world have helped the PDF-file inventor reach a market value of almost $26 billion. Adobe will benefit from the expertise of Lotus Notes and eRoom veterans, while VU founders will collaborate with “an established software firm to get the kind of stability and market exposure needed to effectively launch Buzzword.”
“We were inspired by the way today’s youth spend their lives working and playing together online, and how this is influencing the way we all think about collaboration,” said Rick Treitman, CEO of Virtual Ubiquity. “This inspiration resulted in an online word processor for the ‘Facebook generation’ that focuses on working together online, without sacrificing quality.”
“Adobe was an obvious choice - not only because we built Buzzword on their great Flash platform, but because Buzzword fits so well into the Adobe heritage, which is all about great design and documents that matter. We think we can truly make a difference with Adobe, and help them in a variety of ways. Adobe has some exciting plans for the future, and Buzzword is poised to play an important role in their increasing presence in the area of web applications and collaboration,” said VU’s blog.
Adobe also made available today a free online document sharing service, codenamed “Share.” Users simply select the documents they want to share, send a message to recipients, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted. Built with Adobe Flex technology, the rich interface provides a smooth experience, integrating simple workflows to upload and share documents with high quality online previews to speed up finding the right document. Additionally, the beta will include a set of REST APIs to let developers create mash-ups with their applications, including storing and accessing files, as well as creating thumbnails and Flash-based previews of documents.
