Adobe's future plans for Connect

[JJones]

Does Adobe plan to continue offering Connect service indefinitely or is

there a known sunset date? I ask because Connect appears to be following

the same pattern as other Adobe products that were gradually ended

(PageMaker, OnLocation, ATM Deluxe, Soundbooth, GoLive, etc.), i.e.

updates offer fewer and fewer real technological enhancements. I've been

using Connect intensively for three+ years and have seen very little

breakthrough technical improvements. HD video options? Nope. Expanded

telephone service integration? Nada. Batch recording export? Nothing. It's

very reminiscent of the way these now former products were slowly ended. I

ask because I'm getting pressure in my office to explore Microsoft's

offering as an alternative. I haven't looked at it yet but that might

change if Connect doesn't show any signs of keeping up with the

technological demands of its users.

So, what are Adobe's plans for Connect? Are they investing heavily in its

development or is it going to allowed to whither away like those other

products?

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Sadly, the meat of your questions fall under NDA, so I'll answer what I can. But, you may want to reach out to your reseller and get a call set up with Adobe under an NDA and you can get the roadmap for Connect.

Is Connect sunsetting? No, Adobe is working on keeping Connect as a viable and class leading tool. There is a shift in technology coming, though currently there isn't much out there that can do real-time communication as effectively as Flash. But the Connect 9.5.2 update is a clear sign that Adobe is acknowledging a need to reduce their reliance on Flash and move forward: Adobe Connect 9.5.2 Release Notes.

HD video is a complicated issue. Connect does many things and they all require bandwidth. Implementing HD video would take a significant toll on the bandwidth available to the rest of the application, and honestly, most people don't need HD video in a talking head scenario. I do see that it would be a great feature to have, but there is a real 'is the juice worth the squeeze' argument. The other challenge is that Connect still uses VP6 for it's video and that is not the most bandwidth friendly codec. I have heard rumours of Connect switching to something other than VP6, but I'm not sure of the timeline on that. It may include the ability to go to HD video.

What are you looking for with expanded telephony service? Adobe has never been in the telephony market, so I'm not sure what the will/can offer there. Have you tried talking any of the integrated telephony providers, such as MeetingOne, to see if they can help?

Batch recording export was offered, though at a price as the MP4 conversion option. It wasn't as popular as Adobe hoped (not sure that I can be too surprised at that, but I'm on the outside like everyone else) so they recently dropped that offering. However, there is a company that is in the final stages of making their own solution to do a server side MP4 conversion, which can be queued for batch processing and can do speech to text closed captioning. It will be a paid service, and I have no real idea on price.

Most of the recent updates to Connect were to bring the underlying technology up to date. With Connect 9.4, the underlying media server was Flash Media Server 4.0, which outside of Connect had an EOL from Adobe of September 2013. Connect 9.5 switches to Adobe Media Server 5, which is the current technology offered by Adobe.

I would recommend you keep making noise, maybe see if you can have a conversation with Adobe and help them understand your needs. Customer feedback is going to be the biggest push for how the product moves forward. Feel free to PM me or shoot me an email and I can see if I can help get you some more information, jorma[at]realeyesconnect.com.

[JJones]

Thanks for your excellent reply. Your comment about HD video makes good

points but I would note that it's getting increasingly difficult to

purchase cameras that are either SD or SD-capable. Like most webinar

systems, Connect anticipates the use of a webcam. I and many others,

however, use it with multi-camera feeds that are usually HD-quality.

You're correct in that we don't require HD but we are at a point where HD

will require us! Perhaps Adobe could look to include a way for Connect to

accept an HD feed but downscale it for transmission.