PDF now has a standard home, but whither XMP?

kthomas@cmswatch.com(Kas Thomas) — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 16:28:00 -0400

Until a few days ago, Adobe's Portable Document Format was an open format in name only. The specification was freely available, to be sure, but PDF's development and direction remained firmly under the control of one entity (namely, Adobe Systems). That changed on July 2, 2008, when the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) officially took over the PDF specification from Adobe. PDF is now an authentic industry standard, maintained by a real standards body. (It is officially ISO 32000-1, and you can get your very own copy of it for a mere 370 Swiss francs.)

Adobe is to be commended for making good on its commitment (announced in January of 2007) to turn the PDF format over to an independent standards body. Everybody benefits from this move. Adobe no longer has to bear the burden of maintaining single-handedly what has grown to become a breathtakingly elaborate format specification (over 1300 pages long), and the PDF developer community no longer has to wonder whether the format will forever remain quasi-proprietary.

Adobe needs to do the same thing now with XMP (the eXtensible Metadata Platform), the XML metadata format for images (and other asset types). As readers of our Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008 already know, XMP is seeing widespread use in the DAM and MAM spaces (and getting more popular by the day). It is supported by virtually all Adobe products, and is an integral part of many subvariants of PDF (such as PDF/A), some of which have been ISO standards for years, ironically.

XMP has been under Adobe's control since it made its first appearance in 2001 (as part of the Acrobat 5 release). It's an important standard, one that needs to evolve quickly, in response to community needs and under community direction. (The last revision of the XMP standard was published in 2005.) Adobe is pushing the XMP standard ... at Adobe's pace and in ways that benefit Adobe. (The parallels with PDF are numerous and obvious.) There are lingering technical issues waiting to be solved, however. Issues whose solutions shouldn't have to be dependent on Adobe's needs only.

Let's cut to the chase. If Adobe wants to demonstrate its commitment to openness, it should do for XMP what it has already done for PDF: Put it in the hands of a legitimate standards body. Right now it's open in name only.

Adobe and Alfresco

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:37:00 -0400

It's been a while since there was a big product announcement in the ECM world, but today's announcement by Adobe that they will be embedding Alfresco into their LiveCycle Enterprise Suite will doubtless garner a few headlines. Alfresco, the UK-based open source ECM company, has certainly done a great job of marketing themselves since their launch a couple of years back, stealing some limelight from more established and much bigger vendors such as Interwoven, Vignette, and Open Text.

The question we have to ask is whether this announcement is another marketing triumph, or whether it suggests something more substantial.

First off is the fact that it is a real OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) deal, and the technology will actually get embedded into the Adobe offering, so it is more than simply a paper partnership.

But let's think about what the Adobe offering is and why we do not currently evaluate it in our ECM Suites Report. Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite is a product set built upon the acquisition of Acellio in 2002 (better known as "Jetform"). Though the user interface and underlying codebase may have changed a bit, the principle of this product remains the same: automating simple, usually forms-based, processes. The product excels as a point solution particularly in Government, where a form needs to be issued to the public, and the capture and subsequent business process needs to be automated quickly.

In theory the Alfresco repository adds some true ECM capabilities at the back end of the Adobe product set. Also the Alfresco solution will add some "Web 2.0" capabilities to Adobe, as Alfresco supports Adobe Flex. So in theory, the LiveCycle solution could be extended to build more complex applications rather than basic forms routing.

On a corporate note the OEM deal is intriguing, since of course Alfresco is a minnow compared to Adobe, and there are close connections between the executive teams. For example the Senior Vice President of this particular Adobe Business unit is none other than Rob Tarkoff, a close friend and ex-Documentum colleague of Alfresco CTO John Newton. Could Adobe be planning to acquire Alfresco? Who knows? But if the OEM is successful, an acquisition might appeal to both firms, if less so to Alfresco's current customer base.

In short then, it's an intriguing announcement, and we will be looking at demonstrations of the technology in practice later today as well as testing it out more thoroughly over the coming months. Like us, you should treat this new product arrangement with real caution until it has been thoroughly tested by customers. That is not a a slight against either firm, but an announcement is just that and no more. Time is always the true test.

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PDF now has a standard home, but whither XMP?

Adobe and Alfresco