Let's get ready to FOSE!
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Welcome to the GCN.com Tech Blog, where we won't necessarily tell you whether one product is better than another (we've got the GCN Labs to separate wheat from chaff). Instead we'll report what we see in the government IT market, pass along the latest product news, and help identify the trends that may affect the way your federal, state or local agency uses information technology.
This week the 30th annual FOSE tradeshow takes over the Washington Convention Center here in D.C. FOSE is run by the same company, PostNewsweek Tech Media, that publishes GCN, GCN.com and Washington Technology.
In the weeks leading up to FOSE, we at GCN had the chance to talk to several vendors about what they'll be showing this week. You can read about it in our preview coverage, which is on GCN.com today.
But one important development may not be on the show floor. Last week, Adobe's director of security solutions John Landwehr stopped by GCN to talk about the company's security efforts. The talk was wide-ranging, but near the end he mentioned something that peaked our interest, and it has to do with a company Adobe purchased a couple months ago.
First a little back story. At last year's FOSE, one of the products GCN editors, Lab analysts and writers liked best was the (then) new Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server, which won a GCN Best of FOSE Award. LiveCycle Policy Server essentially allows agencies to control documents inside and outside the firewall. For example, do you want to make it so a person can no longer open a PDF file after a certain number of days? The Policy Server can help set that up.
It's potentially powerful digital rights management software that until recently was limited to PDF files.
Now back to the present. Landwehr said Adobe is just about finished integrating into LiveCycle Policy Server technology it acquired in January when it bought a company called Navisware. The new capabilities will enable Policy Server to manage CAD and Microsoft Office documents the same way it manages PDF. If it works effectively, that's a big step forward. (Why Office and CAD, of all things? Landwehr said Navisware specialized in handling CAD documents, but it turned out that whenever a CAD file was shared among partners, there was always something like a bill of materials in Excel format. Thus the company got into Office formats.)
Landwehr said Adobe is now able to demonstrate the integrated Navisware capabilities as part of LiveCycle Policy Server, but it probably won't be on the FOSE show floor. If you spot a Policy Server product manager at FOSE, ask them about the state of Navisware capabilities.
Have a great week.
Posted by Brad Grimes