A Brief History of Adobe LiveCycle
"LiveCycle" is a pun on the word “life cycle”. At least for Adobe's branding team, it is meant to suggest the life cycle of business processes and customer interactions.
To IT operations teams the world over, it is Java J2EE-based server-side software that runs on most major operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX) and three major J2EE application servers (IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Red Hat JBoss). It is designed to integrate with and fit into exisiting enterprise infrastructure software such as databases (Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sun MySQL), directories (Microsoft Active Directory, Sun ONE, IBM Tivoli, Novell eDirectory) and e-mail (Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes).
The name itself had its beginnings in "Live Paper Server". Along the way, it was also the "Intelligent Document Platform" or IDP.
Here is Google's News Archive Timeline for the word. First mention (in an Adobe context) occurs on June 8, 2004.
People who have installed and configured LiveCycle will notice "IDP" in the JNDI name of the LiveCycle data source (DS) IDP_DS. What is today 'Rights Management' was 'Policy Server' at one time and started life as "Enterprise Document Control" or EDC. Hence the JNDI name for the data source (DS) EDC_DS.
For Internet history buffs, the Wayback Machine is a good place to go snoop. Many of the links in this blog entry are to the Wayback Machine. If you get an error on your first try, it is probably because of trouble with intermediate proxy servers and caching. Try again and chances are that your request will succeed.
Four distinct stages are evident in LiveCycle's evolution so far although these stages overlap one another from a timeline perspective.
ONE-OFF SERVERS (2001 and earlier)
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Adobe's early efforts produced one-off server products that fit desktop functionality into a server model.
Content Server
April 10, 2001 press release announcing Content Server 2.0
Graphics Server
September 9, 2002 press release announcing Graphics Server 2.0
Distiller Server
December 17, 2001 press release announcing Distiller Server 5.0
Document Server
Oct 21, 2002 press release announcing Document Server.
Acrobat Elements Server
November 17, 2003 press release announcing Acrobat Elements Server.
ENTERPRISE PLAY WITH ACQUISITIONS (Jan 2002 - May 2004)
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Adobe starts implementing a planned enterprise strategy, driven by acquisitions.
Accelio Corporation (formerly JetForm)
http://www.accelio.com
February 1, 2002
Announces plan to acquire Accelio Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It described itself as "a leading global provider of Web-enabled business process solutions". Accelio's technology and experience formed the basis for Form Server and Form Designer. Accelio's sizable Professional Services team also formed the core of Adobe's Professional Services team, since renamed Adobe Consulting.
April 15, 2002
Completes the acquisition.
For a detailed story on the acquisition, please see the September 2004 issue of Canadian Business magazine online.
Yellow Dragon Software
http://www.yellowdragonsoft.com
November 5, 2003
Adobe acquires Yellow Dragon Software of Vancouver, British Columbia, a self-described " leader in the development and implementation of ebXML, an open standard technology".
Q-Link Technologies, Inc.
http://www.qlinktech.com
May 3, 2004
Adobe acquires Q-Link, a privately held company based in Tampa, Florida. At their website, it claimed to have the "leading Business Process Management development platform and the fastest solution for delivering process-driven applications." This technology formed the basis of LiveCycle Workflow/Process Management.
6.0 Release August 2004
First release was numbered 6.0 to synchronize with the then shipping version of Adobe Acrobat which was 6.0 (PDF 1.5). Also, the previous release of Form Server from Accelio (C++ based) was 5.0 although Form Server 6.0 was a re-write.
- Form Manager
- Form Server
- Reader Extensions Server
BRAND LIVECYCLE WITH INDIVIDUAL PRODUCTS (June 2004 to May 2007)
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The brand "LiveCycle" is devised and introduced. All products are now prefixed with LiveCycle, for example, LiveCycle Policy Server.
7.0 Release July 2005
Form Server renamed to Forms, and the word "Server" removed from Reader Extensions Server.
New products added to the family :
- Policy Server
- Document Security
- Workflow
- Assembler
- Barcoded Forms ST (stand alone, Windows-only)
An Adobe press release from September 6, 2005
7.2 Release November 2006
J2EE Clusters now supported although configuration is manual.
New products added to the family:
- Print
- PDF Generator
COMMON SERVICE ARCHITECTURE (June 2007 to today)
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Enterprise Suite (ES) (8.0) June 2007
Major re-architecture towards SOA, document service container introduced, Form Manager shelved, added Flex-based Workspace and Eclipse-based Workbench IDE. Installation simplified with a robust LiveCycle Configuration Manager (LCM). Solution Components (formerly called "products") aware of each other.
Policy Server renamed to "Rights Management". Document Security renamed to "Digital Signatures". Barcoded Forms ported to J2EE and runs on all supported operating system platforms.
All solution components now has a "LiveCycle prefix and an "ES" suffix, for example, LiveCycle Rights Management ES.
ES Update 1 (8.2)
Not yet released, LiveCycle enters the 64-bit world with support for 64-bit JDKs from Sun (HotSpot), IBM (J9) as well as BEA (JRockit). It will be IP v6-compliant. LiveCycle Configuration Manager (LCM) will now automatically configure a J2EE cluster.