Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 17, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Adobe Systems and the media group Viacom have entered into a strategic partnership. With its “Adobe Engagement Platform”, Adobe will accordingly become the preferred technology partner for rich-media authoring systems and interactive online-video solutions with which Viacom can make content from its television, film and digital offerings available to its customers online and for mobile devices. With immediate effect, the companies are also collaborating on the development of new media applications. No information was provided on financial details or potential release dates.
The Adobe Engagement Platform is intended to make it easier for companies to make exclusive content based on HTML, PDF and Flash flexibly accessible to a wider group of users. According to the manufacturer, the cross-platform clients Adobe Reader and Flash Player are available on more than 600 million devices worldwide. This allows Viacom to reach its customers regardless of the media and devices they use and give them the choice of how and where they want to consume multimedia content.
“The partnership with Adobe is an important step towards offering our customers online applications and mobile video applications that are robust and state of the art,” says Tom Freston, President and CEO of Viacom. Viacom will use Flash Video as an interactive online-video solution for delivering content on mobile phones via the FlashCast Channel. FlashCast is a flexible client-server solution with which users can access rich, intuitively usable multimedia applications on mobile devices.
“Viacom and we share the same views on how to bring Viacom’s diverse programme content closer to users in innovative and appealing ways, both online and on the move,” explains Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen: “Our partnership and the Adobe Engagement Platform will ensure that Viacom can offer its customers innovative digital multimedia content, regardless of which operating sytem, browser or device the users employ.”
Viacom is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment groups. Its programme offerings for television, film and digital platforms include brands such as MTV Networks (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, CMT: Country Music Television, Spike TV, TV Land, Logo and more than 120 other channels worldwide), BET Networks, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, DreamWorks and Famous Music.
