Adobe doubles down on cloud bet (again) with Document Cloud debut

Adobe is introducing a new line up for the Acrobat family reflecting mobile and cloud trends.

Following up the Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud - the pre-existing cornerstones of Adobe's long-term bet on the cloud - is the Adobe Document Cloud, including a reimagined Reader app (standard and professional) designed for mobile access and sharing.

"Mobile is front and center," observed Jon Perera, vice president of product management for Adobe Document Cloud, citing Adobe now sees approximately 400,000 downloads of its Reader mobile app for iOS and Android alone.

Pointing toward the growth of using mobile for business transactions on the go, Adobe has also seen 100 million transactions processed through EchoSign since the acquisition.

Nevertheless, there's still a long way to go in shifting both employee habits and behaviors.

Adobe and IDC published joint research revealing 80 percent of all document processes are still on paper.

Thus, e-signing will be a core focus for the Document Cloud along with other tracking and control services for managing digital documents, such as "Send and Track," which allows an employee to send a document and detect if a file has been received much like an email.

An additional spinoff is "Fill and Sign," a free app within the Document Cloud suite intended to streamline filling out forms electronically without having to constantly retype information.

Adobe is also bolstering PDF capabilities on mobile with the debut of Acrobat Mobile, which Perera touted goes beyond "lightweight manipulation" and becomes a "first class citizen" for editing PDFs on mobile devices.

Adobe Document Cloud is projected to go live in April.

Images via Adobe