Adobe adds shared workspaces to Acrobat.com

The upgraded Acrobat.com now includes Workspaces for sharing documents among a team

Adobe has introduced Acrobat.com Workspaces, an extension to its online collaboration service that provides shared workspaces to enable teams to easily share project documents and other files when working on projects.

Acrobat.com is a hosted service from Adobe launched last year, which lets users store and share documents, convert files to PDF, share their screen using Adobe ConnectNow, and create documents using online applications such as the Buzzword word processor and Acrobat.com Tables for spreadsheets.

However, Acrobat.com is still in beta outside the US, which means that UK users can create only one free Shared Workspace. US customers can pay a Basic subscription rate that allows them to create up to 20 Workspaces, while Premium Plus subscribers can create an unlimited number.

Adobe did not specify when UK users would be able to sign up for similar susbscriptions.

With the new feature, teams can create a shared Workspace area to store and share a set of files related to a project, allowing colleagues inside and outside the organisation to work together. No special file sharing software or configuration is required by the IT department, according to Adobe.

In this respect, Acrobat.com Workspaces can be viewed as a rival to Microsoft's SharePoint, which is also available as an online hosted service and which is set to gain document editing capabilities through the Office Web Apps coming as part of Office 2010.