Adobe revamps Connect's collaboration features

With videoconferencing features now built in to dozens of communications platforms, companies that focus on business-class videoconferencing are pushing their offerings upmarket. As part of this trend, Adobe announced Thursday a wide range of upgrades to its Connect system. The latest version, Adobe Connect 9.3, will be released at the end of the summer. (A specific release date has not been set.)

Adobe senior product marketing manager Rocky Mitarai says that Adobe continues to make inroads into a market in which Cisco’s Webex Meetings and Citrix GoToMeeting have become synonymous with web conferencing. “Our strategy still remains to go beyond the in-meeting experience and think about end-to-end solutions,” says Mitarai.

In addition to the usual polishing upgrades to fit and finish, Connect 9.3 is launching with major enhancements to three facets of the application: Upgraded social media integration and sharing, significantly enhanced whiteboarding, and a variety of improvements to its screen sharing utility.

Deeper social media integration

Tying social media into video conferences has long been a focus of Connect, and with 9.3 that integration is getting a big upgrade. In Adobe Connect 9.2, Adobe integrated its system with Google+ and Facebook, so when webinar hosts set up an event, attendees could register for it using their existing social media profiles (instead of having to create yet another user ID). Mitarai says this feature reduces the attendee abandonment rate, a perennial problem for those hosting large-scale webinars. With Connect 9.3, says Mitarai, you can “essentially crowdsource the promotion of your events” through custom landing pages that incorporate a variety of social media sharing buttons.

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