Called Acrobat Document Cloud, the service will cost $15 a month and also give users access to digital signatures, mobile applications and other software for tracking documents


Bloomberg/San Francisco


Adobe Systems Inc is sending PDFs into the cloud.
The software maker, which helped to make the portable file format ubiquitous, is rolling out Web-based tools for people to create, store and manage documents online. Called Acrobat Document Cloud, the service will cost $15 a month and also give users access to digital signatures, mobile applications and other software for tracking documents, the company said yesterday.
The new product joins Adobe’s cloud-based marketing and creative-design tools and is part of the San Jose, California-based company’s push to generate more sales from Internet-based subscriptions instead of software installed on computers. While Adobe’s sales declined after the company began its transition to cloud computing in 2011, revenue has recovered and analysts project that results later yesterday will show that sales are on track to climb 18% this year.
In addition to Adobe, Salesforce.com Inc and Oracle Corp have also sought to boost revenue by adding new cloud-computing services for businesses.
Adobe Document Cloud will help businesses reduce their printing and making it easier to sign and modify digital documents, the company said. Users of Adobe Creative Cloud will have access to the new product as part of their subscriptions.
Adobe added e-signature technology, used to signed official documents via the Web instead of in-person, with the acquisition of EchoSign Inc in 2011. The division that includes Acrobat and EchoSign contributed $795.6mn to the company’s 2014 revenue of $4.15bn.
Adobe said Document Cloud will work with products from Microsoft Corp, whose Office suite of business applications is used to create documents. “Everything we’re trying to do is to make Acrobat and the Adobe cloud a strong companion for Microsoft office,” Jon Perera, vice-president of product management for Document Cloud, said in in an interview. A broader array of products will help Adobe compete against DocuSign Inc, Box Inc and other cloud competitors, according to Melissa Webster, an analyst at IDC.