The word adobe traces its roots to spoken Arabic (from Coptic), where it was al tub, or "the brick." Adobe's recently announced Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) can be described as a tub of bricks for building abodes of tablet, mobile, web, and desktop applications. The "tub" in this case is CRX -- the repository layer that Adobe took over via the Day Software acquisition.

In a recently released Advisory Paper, A First look at Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform, I examine how ADEP incorporates Adobe's longstanding LiveCycle offering, along with other related services. Although the first version of ADEP won't go live until August 2011, it represents an important attempt to rationalize and integrate a variety of Adobe tools and services under one framework, with multichannel "Customer Experience Management" as the unifying theme.

There's important long-term potential here, but the real customer value remains unproven at this time. This paper looks at the promise and the potential pitfalls of ADEP from that perspective, as well as upcoming licensing changes and implications of that.

The paper is available for our WCM, Portals, ECM and DAM subscription customers for download here.