Adobe tightens cloud integrations, enters data sharing pact with Microsoft

Adobe on Wednesday rolled out a series of initiatives designed to bolster its Marketing and Creative clouds -- two of the company's cornerstone cloud divisions.

On the marketing front, Adobe announced a partnership with Microsoft that will make it easier for mutual customers to share data.

The alliance ties together Microsoft's customer relationship tool Dynamic CRM with Adobe's marketing software. The resulting effort will help businesses indentify sales opportunities, inform lead scoring and integrate audience behaviors to guide sales or service calls.

The integration is certainly strategic for both companies, as it could eventually bolster sales of software and services outside of their primary focus areas. It also positions the companies more competitively against the likes of Salesforce.com, which has started to move beyond CRM with more products for marketing and analytics.

Sticking with the data-sharing theme, Adobe announced updates to Marketing Cloud that more closely tie big data to creative content. Through new asset management capabilities in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), everyone in an organization's creative-to-marketing workflow will have access to the same assets.

Part of what Adobe calls its "common asset management foundation" is the slated release a new version of Creative Cloud for enterprises that will utilize the same AEM assets as those used in Marketing Cloud. The version will be made available in the next few months.

AEM is also launching managed services for mid-sized companies and departments within larger enterprises. The SaaS offering will allow organizations to manage and deliver all of their Creative Cloud assets, including rich images and videos, across marketing channels.

Adobe also announced that it has acquired the Tumri ad technology from advertising analytics firm Collective. Adobe plans to use the portfolio to bolster the programmatic and dynamic creative functionality in Adobe Media Optimizer, the company's audience targeting tool.

Overall, it looks like Adobe is really going for data-driven connectivity, linking key advertising technology with core services in Marketing Cloud and asset sharing in Creative Cloud.