Adobe targets Acrobat Connect Pro--not to be confused with the Connect that comes free with Acrobat--to small-to-medium sized businesses, and departments at larger corporations.

Version 7 includes enhanced video recording and playback controls to make more coherent, tighter presentation archives. It also supports tracking of materials as well as "breakout rooms" for groups within a larger audience, as well as integration with Blackboard and SumTotal learning management systems (LMSs).

Also included is deeper PDF interoperability for printable materials and supporting content, as well as A/V controls that help companies comply with various privacy and reporting regulations--for example in the United States, some companies might need to record everything for Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory reporting. Others might have to disable saving of any content because of HIPAA privacy laws. Or something in between, such as disabling voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) as the Chinese government requires in some settings.

David Slater, group product marketing manager for Acrobat Connect Pro, said that many companies are turning to online solutions for training and sales presentations that they formerly gave in-person at seminars and trade shows. That, in part, can be tied to the general improvement of Internet bandwidth and web-conferencing technology--as well as large companies having employees, clients, and prospective customers in increasingly far-flung locales.

But there's also the shadow of economic uncertainty affecting budgets driving demand for products like Connect, as well as rising travel costs -- which had been trending upward before the recent spike in gas prices that has seen some U.S. consumers paying $4/gallon.

"All of the web-conferencing companies have started to see jumps in sales, simply because it's making a lot more economic sense," Slater says.

To deliver the meeting content for Connect Pro, Adobe has the mindshare and installed base for Flash (864 million, or 98%, of all Internet-connected personal computers by Adobe's count) and Adobe Reader, which both are on almost every Windows, Mac OS, or Linux computer on the planet.

In the context of Acrobat Connect, what does the Adobe think about the challenge Microsoft is mounting with Silverlight, a Flash alternative, which will no doubt eventually have hooks into Microsoft's own office authoring and web conferencing tools?

"There's a major difference between wanting platform ubiquity and having platform ubiquity," Slater says. "With Silverlight, the actual installed base numbers are incredibly small, and they're not growing at a tremendously great rate. Certainly, Silverlight is an incredible potential threat; as an actual market threat, it's not even on the radar today."

Pricing on Adobe-hosted Connect Pro starts at about $500/seat, Slater says, which goes down with volume. Site licenses are also available for customers who want to host their own meetings. Presenter costs about $500/seat, too, he said.