Adobe Delivers Enterprise Data Platform, Unveils New Deals with Microsoft, LinkedIn at Summit 2019

ADOBE SUMMIT — Adobe kicked off its Summit 2019 in Las Vegas this week with a flurry of technology, business and partner announcements, including the availability of a new data platform that knits together customer data across enterprise applications, and new deals with tech giants Microsoft, LinkedIn and ServiceNow.

Adobe also provided an update on its momentum with business partners. Here’s a rundown of what the San Jose software giant, which produces software for creating, managing and commercializing digital assets and processes, debuted.

On Tuesday, Adobe delivered the Adobe Experience Platform, which the company describes as “the industry’s first real-time platform for customer experience management (CXM).” Think of it as a single, unified and extensible platform that customers and partners can use to put data collected from CRM systems, ERP solutions and Adobe Experience Cloud apps to use. With the Adobe Experience Platform, billions of bits of information can be leveraged to provide consumers and businesses alike with personalized sales and marketing engagements in real time. Among other things, the technology leverages Adobe’s Sensei AI technology and machine learning.

Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen

“It’s been a significant investment for us,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in a Q&A with the media. “We are creating a new platform that serves as the underlying engine for customer experience management.”

During a keynote address, Narayen took time to walk attendees through Adobe’s own digital-transformation journey. It began with a decision to rethink the entire customer journey — from research to acquisition to deployment to renewal.

One of the things that greatly helped Adobe was the creation of a digital dashboard, which now serves as the information window that helps it see its business clearly. The key performance metrics that matter most to the company are now on display for all of its executives to see, helping Adobe make better data-driven decisions.

“We believe that all businesses need to have their own version of the dashboard to help drive their digital transformations,” Narayen said.

Also on Thursday, Adobe disclosed that it was deepening its alliance with Microsoft and creating new integrations with LinkedIn. In both instances, Adobe hopes to develop better account-based experiences (ABX), which are a step up from traditional account-based marketing (ABM) engagements. Think deeper immersion, more personalization and more tailored content.

Adobe and Microsoft are “aligning key data sources to populate account-based profiles in Adobe Experience Cloud, including Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales,” according to the company. In doing so, the two companies will make it easier to for third parties to better target B2B customers on platforms such as LinkedIn.

The deal with ServiceNow, meantime, is expected to result in technology designed to improve the experiences customers get when engaging a company. Today, that experience suffers due to the lack of integration between the data that companies collect from customer engagements (read: marketing) and organizational perceptions (think post-sales service). Unifying these data sets could transform customer experiences in a significant way, Adobe believes.

New Sensei AI technology, also unveiled this week, could certainly help in that endeavor. Sensei has been updated so that marketers can provide the right message on the right channel at the right time. This requires the marriage of data and content, which Adobe is still perfecting.

@adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen on acquisitions at #AdobeSummit2019 : "Very happy with what we have… not looking for aggressive acquisitions" a la @marketo @magento pic.twitter.com/K4aUaVu3YV

— T.C. Doyle (@tcdutah) March 26, 2019

In addition to these announcements, Adobe Summit 2019, which has attracted 17,000 attendees, also provided a glimpse into its growing partner landscape. Adobe today engages nearly 13,000 channel partners, including IT consultants, VARs, MSPs, digital agencies, technology partners and more. It also works with more than 300,000 developers, which makes the Adobe ecosystem one of the largest in the world.

According to Adobe, the Adobe Exchange Marketplace of apps, extensions and services saw 74 percent year-over-year growth in partner participation.

More from partners on how exactly they are leveraging Adobe technology tomorrow.