The big news was the launch of the “Experience Cloud”, a brand-new vision for Adobe’s offerings.
If you’re an avid follower of Adobe you’ll probably know that for the last few years Adobe has focused on three ‘clouds’:
Then earlier this year, they announced the launch of two new clouds, the Analytics Cloud and the Advertising Cloud which elevate elements of the Marketing Cloud to be ‘clouds’ in their own right. Whew, that’s a lot of clouds! So, to save you remembering all of them, Adobe have pulled them all together under the banner of the ‘Experience Cloud’.
The growing importance of data and analytics, along with Adobe’s investment in powerful cloud based machine learning capabilities has resulted in the launch of the Analytics cloud. It enables enterprises to analyse their data, use it to segment their customer base, target customers in real time and attribute the results to media. If you use Adobe Analytics and Audience Manager, you’ll be aware of the close interdependence (and sometimes clear overlaps) of these two tools. The Analytics Cloud now brings them together in one place, along with your data.
Adobe have also fired a shot across the bows of both Google and Facebook with the launch of the Advertising Cloud. Positioning it as the most comprehensive platform for planning, buying and measuring advertising across multiple channels, including digital and TV. The Advertising cloud is built around Media Optimiser, as well as Adobe’s acquisition of Tube Mogul last year. It also draws on the analytics and content capabilities of the rest of the Experience Cloud to analyse, target and activate media across multiple channels.
The launch of the Experience Cloud not only showcased how Adobe have significantly beefed up their capabilities in omni-channel experience management, it also offered an exciting look ahead to the direction they will be taking over coming years. It’s clear Adobe is actively on a roadmap to achieve greater speed and relevance at scale.
Interoperability is at the top of the agenda as Adobe looks to integrate its capabilities into a comprehensive cloud offering. Cognifide has been leading the thinking in this area and our own Cleve Gibbon took to the main stage to demonstrate Adobe I/O with a solution built by Cognifide using Knot.x, an open source tool developed by a talented team of Cognifide developers.
There was also a focus on tools that harness the power of data through AI (Sensei) and we noted a massive uptick in investment in data science capabilities, so we expect there is more to come in this area over coming months.
Adobe also revealed their major strategic partnership with Microsoft, which will create a range of new growth opportunities. The initial outcome of this partnership will mean that the Adobe Experience Cloud will move from being hosted by Amazon Web Services to Microsoft Azure. The two companies will be working on combining Adobe’s strength in marketing with Microsoft’s strength in CRM via Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Power BI, to enable customers to create new data-driven sales and marketing capabilities. It also brings with it Microsoft’s strong security capabilities, which are especially important in government and healthcare verticals.
It’s hard to believe it’s only been 12 months since the last Adobe US Summit, especially when you see how much Adobe have packed into the year. As for Cognifide, we've been working hard too on delivering more integrated experiences across the Experience Cloud. We have taken the lead on building a federated services capability that makes the Adobe Experience Cloud work for everyone.
