Adobe, Microsoft and SAP Announce New Open Data Initiative Details

Global Industry Partners Join Effort to Connect Data and Gather Powerful Insights Fueled by AI and Intelligent Services

At Adobe Summit, the industry’s leading customer experience conference, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) CEO Shantanu Narayen and Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) CEO Satya Nadella revealed additional details about the Open Data Initiative (ODI). As originally announced last September, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP (NYSE:SAP) have embarked on a new approach to business data that will help companies transform their customer experiences through real-time insights delivered from the cloud.

The three partners outlined a common approach and set of resources for customers in an initial announcement last September, with the ambition of helping customers create new connections across previously siloed data, more seamlessly garner intelligence, and ultimately better serve brands with an improved view of their customer interactions.

From the beginning, the ODI has been focused on enhancing interoperability between the applications and platforms of the three partners through a common data model with data stored in a customer-chosen data lake. This unified data lake is intended to allow customers their choice of development tools and applications to build and deploy services.

To improve that process, the three companies plan to deliver in the coming months a new approach for publishing, enriching and ingesting initial data feeds from Adobe Experience Platform, activated through Adobe Experience Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Office 365 and SAP C/4HANA, into a customer’s data lake. This will enable a new level of AI and machine learning enrichment to garner new insights and better serve customers.

Unilever, a mutual customer and one of the early global brands to express support and excitement about the ODI, today announced their intention to simplify a previously complex business outcome based on these data connections.

At Adobe Summit, Unilever is demonstrating how they plan to bring together disparate customer, product and resource data and use AI-driven insights to help reduce their plastic packaging and encourage consumer recycling. By eliminating the silos of data, Unilever will be able to tie inventory and plastics data into Adobe data to enhance customer experiences and encourage participation.

To accelerate development of the initiative, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP also announced today plans to convene a Partner Advisory Council consisting of over a dozen companies including Accenture, Amadeus, Capgemini, Change Healthcare, Cognizant, EY, Finastra, Genesys, Hootsuite, InMobi, Sprinklr and WPP. These organizations span myriad industries and customer segments and believe there is significant opportunity in the ODI for them to drive net new value to their customers.

“Our customers are all trying to integrate behavioural, CRM, ERP and other internal data sets to have a comprehensive understanding of each consumer, and they’re struggling with the challenges of integrating this data,” said Stephan Pretorius, CTO of WPP. “We’re excited about the initiative Adobe, Microsoft and SAP have taken in this area, and we see a lot of opportunity to contribute to the development of the ODI.”

About Adobe

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 404,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.