Integration was the name of the game in the public cloud last week as a number of major players unified their disparate services around the latest enterprise use cases. Adobe Systems Inc. set the ball rolling by repacking three of its most well-known tools into a managed platform for handling documents.

The suite is centered on a new subscription-based version of Acrobat that has been augmented to work with every conceivable type of corporate record. The overhauled implementation uses Photoshop to convert physical papers into a digital format and can automatically extract documents from third party services such as Salesforce.com and Ariba through built-in connectors.

After importing their files, users can take advantage of EchoSign – the third major component of the new Adobe Document Cloud – to send out copies for signatures and to track the status of each request.

The ability to monitor how workers in different parts of an organization interact with files is a major priority that also entered the agenda for Dropbox Inc. last week. The file-sharing giant updated the enterprise configuration of its namesake service with a new system that shows the icons of every user working on a document at any given time, a convenience designed to take some of the friction out of collaborative work. The functionality is embedded directly into Office alongside a complementary real-time commenting feature.

The update is the latest highlight in the tense co-opetition between Dropbox and Microsoft, which also ramped up its cloud efforts last week with the launch of a new software suite for managing connected devices. The bundle is similar to Adobe’s latest offering in that it integrates existing capabilities from the software giant’s cloud platform to address a new requirement, namely capturing machine-generated data and propagating changes across the individual nodes.

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