SAP-Adobe Marketing Cloud deal to benefit both

Reselling Adobe's marketing cloud will assist SAP with brand credibility, says Gerry Brown

SAP and Adobe have announced a joint venture that will see SAP reselling Adobe Marketing Cloud. SAP and Adobe will invest joint development resources for additional product integration and marketing funds for joint co-marketing activities.

Industry sectors to be targeted initially by this partnership include retail, consumer packaged goods, and telecommunications.

But although it is a strong player in the CRM area, SAP has always struggled to deliver a cogent digital marketing solution.

SAP will use the SAP HANA in-memory database platform and the SAP Hybris Commerce Suite with the Adobe Marketing Cloud to provide clients with a complete solution for an omni-channel customer experience.

This alliance fills this gap in SAP's solutions portfolio, and augments the completeness of SAP's overall digital offer.

The new partnership will enable SAP customers to use data held within their SAP ERP and CRM databases and other SAP operational systems to provide a single real-time view of the customer within the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

They can then use the Adobe Marketing Cloud platform to execute relevant and timely campaigns to both market segments and potentially individual customers. This capability is likely to prove attractive to both SAP and non-SAP customers.

Adobe Marketing Cloud, SAP HANA and Hybris are the core technologies that drive the Adobe.com website. Hybris and Adobe in particular have a large stable of joint customers.

Indeed, Ariel Luedi, chief executive of Hybris, and SAP global vice president Shawn Burns both spoke to an audience of 2,500 marketers at Adobe's Marketing Summit Conference in April 2013.

Hence this agreement leverages an existing strong relationship which significantly enhances the position of both Adobe and SAP in the digital marketing arena.

Adobe gains greater access to the large SAP enterprise installed base, a large partner ecosystem and the global SAP salesforce, and SAP gains some great marketing technology and the brand credibility that accompanies Adobe's strong position in the digital marketing arena.

Gerry Brown is senior analyst for customer engagement and marketing technology at Ovum