Adobe and SAP team up

Adobe and SAP have announced a reseller arrangement for Adobe's Marketing cloud suite that will open up SAP's more than 200,000 customers to Adobe while at the same time strengthening Adobe in ecommerce and enterprise resource planning.

Adobe's Marketing Cloud has exceeded $1 billion in revenue and has grown at 20% per annum. 

Brad Rencher (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business, said that he expected this growth to accelerate on the back of the alliance and the new products and functionality added to the suite, most notably its Campaign Manager product.

See the full release below.

Adobe and SAP Team Up to Deliver Insight-Driven Marketing for Enterprise Customers

Partnership Optimizes Customer Experience by Integrating Adobe Marketing Cloud With SAP HANA® and hybris Commerce Suite

WALLDORF, Germany and SALT LAKE CITY, Adobe Summit, The Digital Marketing Conference — March 25, 2014 — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced a global reseller agreement targeted at digital marketing and omni-channel commerce for enterprise customers. As part of the global partnership, SAP plans to resell Adobe Marketing Cloud with the SAP HANA® platform and the hybris Commerce Suite. Adobe and SAP will both invest marketing, sales and development resources in the partnership. The combination of digital marketing and commerce solutions from SAP and Adobe will be designed to help enable businesses analyze data across marketing channels and customer touch points, deliver more relevant, contextual customer experiences and ultimately to move one step closer to real-time customer engagement and drive better business results.

“The extraordinary power of SAP HANA gives us an opportunity to rethink entire industries and ultimately help amplify the potential of users from CIOs to CMOs,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, Products & Innovation. “Adobe has been an amazing partner on the SAP HANA innovation journey. Together, the Adobe Marketing Cloud and the SAP HANA platform will enable companies to analyze massive data sets across various marketing channels and help engage customers in real time, unearthing opportunities like never before.”

“Today’s most successful brands use digital marketing to drive their businesses. In this new world, a strong bridge connecting the worlds of the CMO and CIO is a strategic imperative,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business. “Adobe and SAP, two powerhouses in marketing and commerce technology, are taking a groundbreaking step toward delivering solutions that marketers can use to succeed in today’s business environment.”

Customers are expected to benefit from the partnership in the following ways:

·         Omni-channel commerce: Integration between the hybris Commerce Suite and the Adobe Marketing Cloud will be designed to enable marketers to personalize consumers’ shopping experience from brand engagement and marketing to immersive omni-channel shopping experiences.

·         Data-driven insights: By uniting the power of the SAP® Customer Engagement Intelligence solution powered by SAP HANA with digital marketing capabilities from Adobe Marketing Cloud, marketers will be able to uncover a 360-degree view of the customer and relevant transactions across paid, earned and owned channels.

·         Engaging customer experiences: Integration among SAP HANA, the hybris Commerce Suite and the Adobe Marketing Cloud is expected to enable marketers to engage and deepen customer relationships and help drive revenue across touch points like the web, social and communities.

·         Market with speed and precision: By using SAP HANA to help unify, explore and identify high-value opportunities and Adobe Marketing Cloud to drive digital marketing execution, it is planned that marketers will move from data to insight to action faster than before.

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom."

Comments from Ovum were also sent around:

"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. Retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and telecommunications will be some industry sectors targeted first by the partnership. 

Gerry Brown, senior analyst for customer engagement and marketing technology at Ovum comments:

"Although a strong player in the CRM area, SAP has always struggled to deliver a cogent digital marketing solution. SAP will leverage 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 omni-channel customer experience. This alliance fills this gap in SAP’s solutions portfolio, and significantly augments the completeness of SAP’s overall digital offer.

"The new partnership will enable SAP customers to leverage 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 alike.

"Adobe Marketing Cloud, SAP HANA and hybris are the core technologies that drive the adobe.com web site. Hybris and Adobe in particular have a large stable of joint customers. Indeed, Ariel Luedi, the Chief Executive Officer of hybris, and SAP’s Global VP 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 eco-system 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."