Adobe unveils LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2

Adobe has released the second version of its applications creation software for enterprises.

LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 is designed to enable larger businesses to build productivity and line of business (lob) applications that take advantage of rich media but presented with the user, rather than the developer, in mind.

LiveCycle now takes advantage of core Adobe technologies such as Flash, PDF, and Air which Adobe said would help developers create user-centric software more easily.

"Businesses now expect a certain user experience" Rupert Knowles, an enterprise consultant for Adobe told IT PRO in an interview.

"They expect it to be easy. It's been designed around the user rather than the back end."

Knowles said that the design of LiveCycle ES2 would enable developers to easily pull in data from different locations and aggregate it. Core to this is LiveCycle Mosiac ES2, which helps create context-aware applications and LiveCycle ES2 Plugin for Flash Builder 4, which will tie into Adobe Flex, an open source development app.

Most of the work occurs on the client, in order to improve performance, according to Knowles.

Further easing development are the new Adobe Solution Accelerators, which Knowles said provided 80 per cent of the code necessary for a company to create an application much quicker than previously.

However, a company would need to work directly with Adobe Professional Services or with an Adobe reseller to create the final product.

While there were many enhancements for those creating the services it's the end user that will benefit most, thanks to the use of the rich internet applications. "We're capturing information in a rich way and overlaying more interactivity on top," Knowles said.

He added: "Business users can now create forms without involving IT, which is always an expensive step."

Other enhancements include user access to ES2 apps from mobile devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile and drag-and-drop access to ES2 services from the desktop to create PDFs.

Enterprise customers can now also choose to have LiveCycle ES2 services hosted in their cloud infrastructure.

Adobe said that LiveCycle ES2 will be available before the end of the year, with the hosted solutions making an appearance in early 2010, but it has not yet confirmed pricing details.