Adobe buys EchoSign company specializing in electronic signature technology

PanARMENIAN.Net - Adobe Systems, creator of the Portable Document Format standard use for digital documents, has bought EchoSign, a company specializing in electronic signature technology, CNET reports. The move means Adobe will get new abilities for its document-handling software. Electronic signatures have held promise for years for letting people sign documents without having to resort to the paper-based hassles of scanning, faxing, and mailing, but haven't made major inroads.

EchoSign and Adobe hope to change this, naturally. Adobe has been working hard to embed its products as deeply into business computing as Microsoft Office, and EchoSign is part of that effort.

"Together, our aim is to make electronic signatures the standard way for people to sign documents and automate contracting," said EchoSign chief executive Jason Lemkin.

EchoSign has a subscription service for small and medium-sized businesses and also offers an application programming interface (API) to let companies integrate the signature technology with their own procedures for sending, tracking, and signing documents.

EchoSign's technology will be built into several Adobe products. "The EchoSign solution will be integrated with Adobe's other document services including SendNow for managed file transfer, FormsCentral for form creation, and CreatePDF for online," the executives said.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.