Adobe will soon roll out digital signature capabilities based on an open standard it worked on as part of the Cloud Signature Consortium. The vendor says this is an industry first. Here are the key details from Adobe's announcement:
Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Sign will enable digital signatures, the most advanced and secure type of electronic signatures used for things like healthcare forms or mortgage applications, in any browser or on any mobile device. The Adobe Sign preview release will be available to customers in the coming weeks.
“Open standards propel entire industries forward, allowing interoperability between otherwise fragmented solutions, and paving the way for widespread adoption,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager of Digital Media, Adobe. “Adobe pioneered digital signatures. And as the creator and champion of standards like PDF, we are proud to have once again rallied the industry to develop a new, open standard for digital signatures in the cloud, ensuring a great customer experience.”
Adobe Sign is also getting a number of new features, including advanced document routing; paper-to-digital smartphone document scanning; a more flexible iOS visual interface for reading large documents; and integration with SharePoint.
There's also functionality for complex document workflows, such as for loan applications. Adobe Sign will make is possible to start and complete such workflows entirely digitally, aided by a custom dashboard, Adobe said.
Digital signatures go well beyond e-signatures as far as security. While an e-signature is good enough for many types of transactions and can be validated by a password, email or other means, digital signatures employ digital IDs issued by a trusted certificate authority and use public key infrastructure.
With the new open-standards based digital signatures, Adobe gains another competitive weapon against the likes of Docusign, while speaking to a broader market trend.
"Signature is the gateway to identity," says Constellation Research founder and CEO R "Ray Wang. "Identity is the key to commerce. Efforts to make identity secure and frictionless help brands and organizations take a key step towards digital transformation."
"Individuals need a third-party, secure approach to signatures in the cloud in order to support their digital aspirations," Wang adds. "This is why digital signatures are a foundation for digital transformation."
Docusign, coincidentally, took a new step of its own into e-commerce this week, announcing a partnership with payments service Stripe.
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