Adobe announced closer integration of its content management system, Experience Manager, with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. It follows other integrations announced over the past year. I wouldn’t even mention this except that everybody got all excited when Marketo announced it was using Microsoft Azure as its host. This is what a real partnership looks like, folks.
I’m not sure launching an artificial intelligence-based service counts as news. But Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference kicks off today so I’ll mention that they’ve announced “myEinstein” AI services that let non-developers create predictive models and chatbots. General release is due next summer. I’ll let you decide whether it’s a good idea for thousands (millions?) of Salesforce users to deploy automated systems with little oversight. But I’m certain that Salesforce’s apparent decision to refer to all its users as “Trailblazers” is just plain silly.
Of course, few pieces of research are more fascinating than what your competitors are up to. Market intelligence aggregator Crayon scans the Web for news, marketing campaigns, Web site changes, customer reviews and support requests, and such, and then shares the bits that seem important. They’ve just launched a free tool that gives daily digests of competitors’ marketing efforts.
Google is facing another antitrust lawsuit, this time in Canada, specifically focusing on anti-competitive practices in online advertising. The Competition Tribunal has been asked to order Google to sell two of its ad tech tools, prohibit future anti-competitive practices and fine the company billions of dollars. In response, Google points to a highly competitive market offering plenty of alternatives.