From Art To Business ProcessesFrom Art To Business Processes

Adobe Systems Inc. this week plans to introduce two products aimed at government, financial-services, and manufacturing customers.

Document Server lets companies assemble and lay out dynamic XML and PDF documents that contain charts and other data from business apps. The documents can bear a digital signature and can be viewed with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. Document Server will run on Windows and Solaris and is priced at for $10,000 per CPU.

Document Server for Reader Extensions embeds and encrypts usage rights within a document that can be decoded by Acrobat Reader version 5.1. It's aimed at government workflows, and Adobe has conducted a pilot with the Internal Revenue Service that lets taxpayers digitally sign tax forms, Adobe senior VP Ivan Koon says. The extensions server starts at $75,000 for use with 10 separate forms.

Adobe hired Koon in August to head its ePaper division, which aims to place Adobe technology inside business and government processes.