ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday,
the CEOs of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and SAP (NYSE: SAP) introduced the Open Data Initiative at the
Microsoft Ignite conference. Together, the three longstanding partners are reimagining customer experience management (CXM) by
empowering companies to derive more value from their data and deliver world-class customer experiences in real-time.
In today's world, data is a company's most valuable asset. However, many businesses struggle to attain a complete view of
their customer interactions and operations, because they are unable to connect information trapped in internal silos. At the same
time, important customer information also resides in external silos with intermediary services and third-party providers,
limiting a company's ability to create the right connections, garner intelligence and ultimately extract more value from its own
data in real time to better serve customers.
Companies around the world use software and services from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP to run product development, operations,
finances, marketing, sales, human resources and more. Today, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP are joining forces to empower their mutual
customers with the Open Data Initiative, which is a common approach and set of resources for customers based on three guiding
principles:
- Every organization owns and maintains complete, direct control of all their data.
- Customers can enable AI-driven business processes to derive insights and intelligence from unified behavioral and
operational data.
- A broad partner ecosystem should be able to easily leverage an open and extensible data model to extend the solution.
Based on these principles, the core focus of the Open Data Initiative is to eliminate data silos and enable a single view of
the customer, helping companies to better govern their data and support privacy and security initiatives. With the ability to
better connect data across an organization, companies can more easily use AI and advanced analytics for real-time insights,
"hydrate" business applications with critical data to make them more effective and deliver a new category of AI-powered services
for customers.
"Adobe, Microsoft and SAP are partnering to reimagine the customer experience management category," said Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe. "Together we will give enterprises the ability to harness and action massive
volumes of customer data to deliver personalized, real-time customer experiences at scale."
"Together with Adobe and SAP we are taking a first, critical step to helping companies achieve a level of customer and
business understanding that has never before been possible," said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
"Organizations everywhere have a massive opportunity to build AI-powered digital feedback loops for predictive power, automated
workflows and, ultimately, improved business outcomes."
"Microsoft, Adobe and SAP understand the customer experience is no longer a sales management conversation," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "CEOs are breaking down the silos of the status quo so they can get all people
inside their companies focused on serving people outside their companies. With the Open Data Initiative, we will help businesses
run with a true single view of the customer."
To deliver on the Open Data Initiative, the three partners are enhancing interoperability and data exchange between their
applications and platforms — Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Experience Platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP C/4HANA and
S/4HANA — through a common data model. The data model will provide for the use of a common data lake service on Microsoft Azure.
This unified data store will allow customers their choice of development tools and applications to build and deploy services.
With the Open Data Initiative, companies will be able to:
- Unlock and harmonize siloed data to create new value
- Bi-directionally move transactional, operational, customer or IoT data to and from the common data lake based on their
preference or needs
- Create data-powered digital feedback loops for greater business impact, while also helping to enable their security and
privacy compliance initiatives
- Build and adopt intelligent applications that natively understand data, relationships and metadata spanning multiple
services from Adobe, SAP, Microsoft and their partners
Technology leaders at top retail and consumer products companies, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever and Walmart, have
expressed support and excitement about the Open Data Initiative.
"This initiative from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP is an important and strategic development for the Coca-Cola System," said
Barry Simpson, chief information officer at the Coca-Cola Company. "Our digital growth plans
centered around our customers are fueled by these platforms and open standards. A more unified approach to the management and
control of our data strengthens our ability to support our growth agenda and our ability to satisfy security, privacy and
GDPR-compliance requirements. The industry needs to follow these leaders."
"Every day, 2.5 billion people use a Unilever product in over 190 countries around the world," said Jane Moran, CIO, Unilever. "The Open Data Initiative from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP is an important undertaking
that will help us reimagine customer experience management by bringing together data across our entire organization to build more
direct, meaningful relationships with consumers in real time."
"We're excited about the Open Data Initiative and the value it will unlock for Walmart," said Clay Johnson, executive vice president and enterprise chief information officer, Walmart Inc. "With
greater ability to connect and harness the power of our data, we can enhance the associate experience and
create entirely new ways to serve our customers online and in our stores."
More information is available at https://www.microsoft.com/opendatainitiative, https://www.adobe.com/experience-platform/open-data-initiative.html and http://www.sap.com/opendatainitiative.
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.
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.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.