No standalone upgrade from LiveCycle Designer ES4 to AEM Forms

[nickie95527309]

Hello,

Why is there absolutely no support/upgrade from LiveCycle Designer ES4 to an equivalent standalone product in AEM Forms?

My company has been told by an Adobe representative that we either have to buy in a managed service, where our forms are hosted on Adobe servers, which is unacceptable to the multi-national bank we work for as they only host on their own secure servers. We have been told the only other option would be an on-premise license which would allow us a massive total of SIX complex forms, at a cost of up to £175,000 per year!

I find this totally unacceptable, surely there is some way of continuing to support our forms now that LiveCycle Designer is end-of-life, without this extortionate cost - which our client will not approve.

Surely there must be some other solution please?

[smacdonald2008]

We asked the team to look here.

[TundraSteve · Accepted solution]

I think something was lost in communication/terminology here and I apologize for that. 

You can continue to use LiveCycle Designer.  What I think was lost in translation was the fact that you're likely creating PDF forms that you're making available on your website and the browser vendors don't allow for the Adobe Reader plugin to be loaded.

Your option is to allow a customer to download the PDF form from Designer and in some cases this user pattern isn't desirable.  Adobe has provided a server capability that provides a better mobile experience that PDF where you may have to pinch or zoom.  You can take the forms you have today have render those as HTML and they'll look the same and scripts will work in the browser or for a better experience use those forms as a Form Model for an Adaptive Form for great mobile experience.

There is a cost for the server technology but it's not just rendering a form, it provides elements such as creating a document of record, workflow, and correspondence management to name just a few of the capabilities.

Hope this helps

Steve