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Adobe Systems this month announced Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 (ES2), a substantial upgrade that lets businesses and governments build applications that interact with customers and constituents across devices and channels.

LiveCycle ES2 offers productivity improvements to IT and line of business managers, providing a rich Internet application (RIA) framework for building customizable RIA workspaces, mobile and desktop access to critical applications, and deployment in the cloud.

One of the most useful upgrades is that LiveCycle ES2 now integrates more tightly with Flash and PDF technologies. This lets developers create user-centric applications that contrast with the more traditional, unwieldy, system-centric applications users have had to tolerate. New Adobe application-modeling technology will be a help to Adobe Flex and LiveCycle developers and allows them to more efficiently write applications by reducing the amount of code and simplifying data integration.

Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe's Business Productivity Business Unit, described the upgrade like so:

“Adobe LiveCycle ES2 enables enterprises to build software solutions that work the way people work, in a format that people have become accustomed to in their personal lives, with social media, mobile and consumer applications -- this is key to driving business in today’s economy.

"LiveCycle ES2 offers powerful tools and environments such as model-driven application development, self service RIA frameworks and streamlined authoring to enable organizations to create applications that more effectively generate, capture, and exchange critical information," Tarkoff said.

One large Adobe customer had this to say:

“Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is an ideal complement to our business process automation efforts," said Rainer Hahn, chief information officer for personal services telekom at Deutsche Telekom. "With the latest release, we anticipate even greater efficiencies in automating processes that touch our employees, partners, and customers. ... Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is flexible and easy-to-use, enabling us to quickly transform some of our most complex business processes."

Focus on Flex

Flex-based applications are also a focus of LiveCycle ES2. A new plug-in for Adobe Flash Builder 4 beta lets developers more seamlessly embed LiveCycle ES2 technologies into any Flex-based application. Furthermore, the new LiveCycle Collaboration Service (formerly Adobe Flash Collaboration Service) -- a hosted service -- provides developers and enterprises with a scalable solution to easily build real-time, multi-user collaboration into existing or new RIAs. The powerful and flexible framework accelerates the development and deployment of user-centric applications by enterprise developers.

LiveCycle ES2 also features expanded options for participating in key business processes. LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile offers access to LiveCycle ES2 from iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices, allowing users to interact with tasks on the go. Adobe is also announcing the ability for enterprise customers to deploy LiveCycle ES2 as fully managed production instances in the cloud, with 24x7 monitoring and support from Adobe, including product upgrades. LiveCycle ES2 preconfigured instances will be hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment, providing organizations a faster deployment path and lower total cost of ownership.

For pricing and availability go to www.adobe.com/livecycle.

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