LCCS , no longer a going concern?

[TVonthemob]

So I have a project I have been working on for a few months, wrapping my head around Flex to get to LCCS because I felt the price was right and the capabilities were strong.  I have been sensing blood in the water over this with the recent Flash/Flex changes , but SDK's have been rolling along.  So I called my sales to guy to inquire about the mobile LCCS sdk / switching to commercial service as I want to deploy some stuff outside.   Since mobile is the target of my work really.  I have been told as of tonight that the actual mobile sdk is not going to be released.  Nigel is gone, which doesnt sound promising for the whole concept.  They have replaced him so I am sure there are steady hands at the wheel, but man I feel like I have wasted a few months.  Anyone else have any better information?  I hope we can ask nicely enough that they keep this stuff in development and extend it to mobile.  Greedily, I just want webcamera , audiosubscriber, audiopublisher, maybe shared whiteboard but I could be happy without it.  I actually would be happy if they just gave me some detailed samples to extend the non optimized version with microphone classes. I want to 4.6 to extend the torch on the device hopefully with a native extension.

[mjt333]

A troubling report.  Can anyone please confirm / refute the demise of AIR Mobile SDK?

[Former Community Member]

First, no disrespect to Raff (http://forums.adobe.com/people/Raff.) or any other amazing, hard working members of the Collaboration Service team that may remain.

However, unless you hear otherwise from Dave Wadhwani or Shantanu Narayen, assume the worst regarding the Collaboration Service.

Bolstering my assertion regarding the Collaboration Service, 11 days is a very long time for there to be **NO REPLY** on the original post of this thread by TVonthemob  :-(

If anyone hears further from any sources with Adobe, please post updates here.  That is regarding Adobe's ongoing commitment to LCCS generally, or the Spark (and therefore mobile) version of LCCS SDK.

hth

[TVonthemob]

I am not hoping to sink my own ship here.  I want this stuff to work.  Its affordable, it seems reliable, and hell, it has more features than I need.  I came to adobe for this.  I will leave adobe if this isnt an option anymore.  On some of my other posts, it seems like they are adapting, making some changes for the next lccs 2.3 or whatever and that encourages me.  If its not profitable for them or whatever, sell some licenses to host it outside or whatever.  I think this is a great "now" solution and hope they develop these concepts for html5 products when html5 is ready, but its not.  Allow us to have some apps and air products that deploy to anywhere important for a couple of years until html5 allows more interactions.  I was a little upset in my earlier post, yes I want more transparency, but they give so much for free to try it out.  (btw, updating the sdk samples for 4.6 would be helpful)  The responsiveness to bugs in the forums has been totally great and I know the workers in the trenches can't be excited about their own job expectancy.  This coming from someone who until a few months ago was working on an os that just got open sourced after months of looming in a lurch.  People respond poorly to lack of information.  Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from anyone adobe on this issue.

[JoshRWeinstein]

FWIW, Raff has been actively in communication with and working with us to resolve some potential bugs with LCCS, so they are clearly working on it. Perhaps it might be worthwhile for us to send an email to Kevin or other folks from Adobe to show our support for the product? We are definitely interested in the mobile SDK, too...

Josh

[tinylion_uk]

Just out of interest

How many of us have gone on to get a ‘Paid subscription’, I have for a couple of projects.

I was just interested in hearing how many of us are actually already using the service and how many have plans to, and how many are just at the evaluation stage

I agree that we should let Adobe know that we care about this product and service

I for one would be really unhappy to see it go. It would in fact be a total nightmare.

It also would hurt our case to let Adobe hear our voices here.

Glenn

tinylion uk

[JoshRWeinstein]

Been using the paid service for around 18 months. Anyone have suggestions

on how best to demonstrate support?

Josh

[TVonthemob]

I posted a question to the #flexsummit twitter feed asking for a roadmap for LCCS but who knows if they can/wan't to provide that.  If I get a reply, will contribute to this thread.  I don't want this to come across as complaining, just want to be reassured that adobe knows people want this product to be alive.  I, as previously stated, will be converting this a paid account in the next few days and ride it as long as they will support it.

[Adobe_ejs · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I'm Jeff Stanier Group Product Manager for LiveCycle and I am now responsible for LCCS.

As part of Adobe’s strategy to focus on digital marketing and digital media, we are in the process of evaluating each of our products and services to determine if they are aligned to the company strategy. LCCS is one of those services going through evaluation. We will continue to support the existing paying customers that are already using LCCS. However, we can confirm that at this point we are not accepting new enterprise customers. Our support will be based on the current set of services offered and we are not planning any new enhancements to the service at this time. I want to be very clear that this is not a statement that covers all of LiveCycle, just Collaboration Services.

We are still looking into options and alternatives for our LCCS customers, and will provide further updates as they become available.

Thanks,

Jeff

[mjt333]

Not what I was hoping to hear, but I appreciate the update.

[Former Community Member]

Hi Jeff:

Thank you for your response.

Minor clarification request ... does the "the current set of services" include a release of the Spark (and therefore mobile) version of LCCS SDK?  Beyond the currently available beta release?

I ask, in part following up on a post by Adobe Employee aponnusa on Dec 8 referencing "the upcoming SDK release which is very soon."  Following is the link for aponnusa's post:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4072538#4072538

[Raff_]

No, "the current set of services" means "the current set of released services". Given the change of direction we currently have no plan to continue developing the Spark version of the SWC, but we'll try to support it as much as we can.

With the "upcoming release" (very, very soon ) we'll post another build of the Spark LCCS.swc with some bug fixes integrated and support for AEC.

With the "next release" (no real plans for now but there will be more bug fix releases) I would like to include the source code and binaries as part of the SDK. Again, we will not be completing the project, at least in the forseable future, but I would like to release the current version in a state that you can build and work on it yourself (and if you make serious updates and/or bug fixes and are willing to contribute them back, we'll take them).

Also, note that not completing the Spark version of the SDK does not means "you can't reliably use LCCS on mobile". All you need to run in any version of Flash ( > 9. mobile included ) is the Flash-only version of the SDK, that contains all the messanging and connectivity stuff.

The Flex version add a basic set of prebuilt components, and the Spark version was the re-implementation of those components for Spark. While our components are useful, are not really beatiful or rocket-science (ok, the whiteboard is "almost there" for beauty and complexity ) so all but the most basic projects you are probably better off implementing the components you need yourself (and if you need to, please "borrow" from our code )

Again, not what anybody on this forum (us included) was hoping to hear, but for now this is how things are.

[ablerman]

Since it's pretty clear that the end of the road is in sight for LCCS, is there any chance that we could see the FMS code? At least that way we could continue to use the legacy that so many have poured their sweat into.

Also, what sort of advanced notice can we expect when LCCS is inevitably terminated  down the line? ( Hopefully a few years out. )

Thanks, I appreciate the candor.

-sandy lerman

[DrAlexGor]

I'll second the request for FMS+LCCS source (server side) so we can continue to use system

Thanks for the info!

Alex G.

[TVonthemob]

Well, no better way to insure the death of a product than to stop accepting money from people who want to buy it.  I confirmed that I am unable to convert my developer account to a paid account. 

[Adobe_ejs]

I will look into both the source code option as well as dates for termination.  Right now we do not have plans to stop the service. We will provide significant notice if we do decide to shut the service down.

[TVonthemob]

Jeff,

Thanks for the honesty. I know things change quickly in big companies and

its usually a balance sheet issue of whether to keep throwing money at

something or not. Since there is no finite plans for shutting the service

down, why stop accepting paid memberships? We all want to make money on

this stuff and some of us have pretty good business cases for using this.

Can you reconsider this and continue to accept paid subscriptions until you

decide the fate of the product? I have read that untangling this component

and allowing it to run solely on a FMS server standalone would likely be

very time consuming.

Antonio

[Raff_]

Can you start a new thread with information about the problem, instead of assuming the worst ? (maybe a screenshot or something).

We are not doing anything to stop you paying us and we just verified that the upgrade was working yesterday. But post more info and we'll look into it as soon as possible.

[Adobe_ejs]

Antonio,

Like Raff said we have not made any changes with respect to accepting paid memberships.    It sounds like a bug.  Please start a separate thread.

Jeff

[TVonthemob]

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/937618

new thread started

[TVonthemob]

I stand thankfully very corrected!  There is a purchase bug which has been noted in the other forum but it only affected my 10.6 OSX machine, not my 10.7 Machine.  I am now in the paid developer category and I hope this continues to grow and develop enough where it makes sense for adobe to keep this alive.  thanks.