Analysis: Third-party PDF software developer vaults out of the engineering world and into the office world.Bluebeam announced Aug. 22 it will integrate its PDF markup tools with BB-Bid, a free, online service of The Blue Book of Building and Construction. Essentially, contractors can communicate better with developers and one another by attaching documents with markups to requests for information (RFIs)—a crucial way business gets done in that sector.
That's par for the course for Bluebeam, which made its mark by bringing PDF tools that work to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
Bluebeam founder Richard Lee, however, wants more. With last month's release of PDF Revu 5.5, his company's pushing further into the general office market, offering software that competes with the likes of ARTS PDF's NitroPDF, Global Graphics' Jaws suite, a host of freeware and shareware PDF tools and, of course, Adobe and Acrobat itself.
Revu's markup features spur change PDF Revu isn't a new product; it used to be Pushbutton PDF. The 5.5 version, despite being designated as a mere point update, is a substantial upgrade from the previous incarnation: It's tuned for 64-bit computing and has a new suite of text-editing and document markup features, Lee says, that customers in the financial, government, education and legal markets requested.
The user base for the former Pushbutton product has grown, organically, beyond its engineering niche as lawyers—who other PDF developers tell me are notoriously unwilling to invest much capital in their document software—find price meeting performance with Bluebeam's app.
"The legal industry looks a lot like the AEC industry, in that there are a lot of big firms and a lot of small firms: 80 percent small firms, and 20 percent big firms " Lee says. "Because of that profile, our marketing, our product feature [development for both groups] works in almost exactly the same manner; it's very easy for us to develop custom features to a certain vertical...We now have a number of large law firms using our products."
That's not to say Bluebeam's ignoring its homeboys back in AEC, however: PDF Revu 5.5 also debuts a custom set of PDF-centric features that automatically launch when the app detects that it's on a Tablet PC. While the device hasn't exactly captured the fancy of the rest of the world, it's an increasingly popular computer in the AEC market, as they're more portable and convenient for field work.
Page 2: New features propel growth
"We renamed it PDF Revu when we added the markup technology," Lee says, which isn't just some cute little buttons like those Acrobat installed 10 years ago. Instead, it's Markup 2.0, something Bluebeam's named "Multiview," or tabbed document browsing: Imagine multiple open documents and the ability to pan and zoom them all at the same time, in the same way. Or, in the case of complex architectural renderings, 16 simultaneous renderings of the same document.
Sounds complicated, but it does what people in legal, government and, yes, the AEC market need it to do: Standardizes the look, feel and style of markups across many documents. If needed, all at once.
"We have a very innovative way of tracking markups, and storing those markups and tools across user sessions so you only have to create that markup once and re-use it indefinitely," Lee says.
One can see how this might benefit a contractor tying together a materials order, building services, engineering, equipment rental and all the other stuff that goes on in a large building project.
Or, for that matter, an attorney's team putting together a case that requires turning a roomful of paper documents into a DVD full of searchable PDFs in time for next week's trial. Or a college IT director trying to route millions of e-forms through the system to the government, administration, parents and students.
Interestingly, it's companies like Bluebeam that are helping push PDF to new groups of users, and deeper into the enterprise. While a lot of companies and government agencies are investing in large quantities of full Acrobat licenses—check out Adobe's quarterly financial calls if you don't believe it—one doesn't just jump into PDF by writing a check to Adobe for six or eight figures. PDF has to take root in your organization, and companies are testing the water with lower-cost solutions, starting with vanilla PDF tools downloaded or installed free with the operating system and moving up to shareware or competitively priced apps.
Some of these experimenters will move to Acrobat. Others will be content to stay with tools from a company such as Bluebeam, Jaws or ARTS PDF. With each successive rev of the Acrobat competitors—like PDF Revu 5.5—that group's size increases.
Document Management 
