Adobe 2006 Annual Report Download - page 14

14
Enterprises are under increasing pressure to save money, offer improved customer service, adhere to
regulatory requirements and leverage existing investments in core systems. As a means to address these issues, a
critical component of an organization’s business processes is the need to interact with data stored in enterprise
applications. As this need expands beyond the core users of those applications, adapting systems to accommodate
a diverse group of users has become an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. The outcome is a proliferation
of manual workarounds that result in process inefficiencies, delays and poor quality of information.
In addition, enterprises have built Web applications which enjoy the reach of the Web but often fail to deliver
a user interface with the ease of use and richness that users expect. This impedes utilization of these applications
and increases training costs, reducing the overall return on investment (“ROI”) that enterprises expect.
Organizations are now looking to Rich Internet Applications (“RIA”) to boost their ROI for these Web
applications by combining a rich graphical application interface with the universal reach of the Web.
We believe significant opportunities exist to help enterprises address these issues by making their business
processes more efficient and their Web applications more engaging. To address these opportunities, we offer
Adobe Enterprise and Developer Solutions to securely extend the reach of information, processes and services to
engage with customers and constituents. Our solutions leverage our technology platform, which helps businesses
and government agencies inspire commitment in their customers and constituents by engaging them – anywhere,
any time, and in any medium through our universal clients and application solutions.
Our technology platform utilizes our universal Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player software, which ensure
reliable, secure and rich application experiences across browsers, desktops and devices. The technology platform
provides developers with an RIA programming model to integrate and optimize workflows, and a server software
framework to simplify integration and leverage existing enterprise infrastructures. We also offer services and
other software components to accelerate the creation of compelling, relevant and actionable applications, either
through RIAs or through intelligent electronic documents.
We believe our technology platform revolutionizes how enterprises and government agencies present,
deliver, consume and interact with information and content. By providing an integrated client-server framework
and toolset for developers, designers and IT organizations, we believe our Enterprise and Developer Solutions
allow our customers to:
• Engage their constituents with compelling experiences and intelligent documents – providing them with
the ability to act upon information or tasks presented to them for improved and effective collaboration;
• Streamline and accelerate document-based processes so more work gets done;
• Simplify the creation and deployment of compelling, relevant and actionable applications;
• Augment existing enterprise infrastructures to deliver the next level of engagement with their
stakeholders;
• Scale these solutions needs regardless of the size of their constituent populations; and
• Leverage the ubiquitous Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player clients to reach people inside and outside
of their organizations, and across all desktops and devices.
Although our Enterprise and Developer Solutions address the needs of a diverse set of enterprise customers,
we focus primarily on key vertical industries such as financial services, telecommunications, media and
publishing, education, manufacturing, government and life sciences. For these customers, we offer
comprehensive, scalable, secure and reliable server products and tools to develop applications tailored to their
specific information and business process requirements.