framemaker platypus,adobe robohelp,adobe framemaker,madcap blaze,madcap flare,online collaboration,workflow collaboration,technical communication,technical writing

Raw Data from Astoria Rich Media Regarding Adobe’s RoboHelp / FrameMaker

Additionally, Dan from Astoria Rich Media looks into the Adobe Print and Classic Publishing space. For those of you who followed in from the HATT RoboHelp knife fight, we can not verify but generally assume these products to be in the Other category in Adobe’s SEC docs that exclude RoboHelp.

Adobe’s Print and Classic Publishing (PCP) division is explicitly going after the professional technical writer market (by our estimate a market that is worth at least $4  billion per year in recurring revenue), while the Creative Solutions business unit is targeting (for lack of a better word) “creative” types.

I’m guessing here (and a number of people who work for Adobe have told me it’s a good guess) but I’d bet the Creative Solutions BU and the PCP BU are not that tightly integrated (why would they be, they target different markets).

Wow. $4 billion is much more than the $36 million I was looking at. Of course, that includes FrameMaker’s market and more.

FrameMaker Platypus – If it walks like a duck and has a bill, it still may not be a duck

I have to tell you, I initially posted on Dan’s blog regarding my current hypothetical FrameMaker Platypus:

It may only be my personal skepticism, however my first inclination at Adobe’s Technical Communication Blog entry is that they’re dusting off the RoboHelp for FrameMaker product.

I would only give this about a 30% chance of occurring, but I’ll give it to you to evaluate.**Note: If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, okay?!?

1. Item: RJ Jacquez, current Adobe RoboHelp Product Evangelist was hired away from Quadralay by eHelp back in 2002 or 2003 in order to product manage RoboHelp for FrameMaker.
2. Item: It’s part of Adobe’s IP they inherited when they bought Macromedia.
3. Item: MadCap is coming out with Blaze that will directly compete with FrameMaker. They just announced hiring a FrameMaker industry expert as their Blaze Product Manager.

Here’s a link to the stats about it, including the still available help file which will detail some :
http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelpframemaker/documentation.html

Basically it would give FrameMaker that joyful phrase of ‘tight integration between Creative Solutions’ by being able to publish content formerly published only by RoboHelp.

Note that the capability to do this was discontinued in 2004.

Add to that mix Captivate for eLearning content development and PowerPoint conversion, and Contribute with some scrubbing for blog posting and you’re looking at a potential competitive mini-suite.

Berkeley Roots Showing

I am blown away at what a little quite websurfing can uncover.Just as I’m ready to log off for the night, I’m feeling like I just attended a sixties love-in fest.

Of course this is because of the recent sources I’ve found regarding workflow collaboration, corporate wiki use, if I’ve blogged about it, I’ve found it.

Regarding Workflow and Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0, I can’t say it any better than Dan Ortega. Quoted from Astoria Rich Media WebLog: Workflow holds the key to rich media’s enterprise success:

Rich media applications are getting piecemeal traction within larger corporations (mostly in the marketing and communications areas), but the gating factor to widespread adoption is not where they’re used, but how they’re used.

Corporations are all about production workflow, whether the end product is an automobile, a home mortgage, investment services, etc. Any large company is geared to follow a process that needs to be followed from start to finish. That’s how they create, manage, and deliver products and services that bring in revenue.

There’s more juicy data from Dan regarding Adobe… I’ll include it in a dedicated Blog post.