Marketo: One Platform for Engagement

That was the promise made by Steve Lucas, well into his second year as Marketo CEO, and putting the emphasis -- as you might expect from his track record with SAP and Salesforce -- on product. There was no shortage of product announcements at Marketing Nation 2018, Marketo's annual summit, although they were perhaps overshadowed by acquisition and partnership news: The acquisition, in particular, of marketing performance platform Bizible, announced yesterday; the acquisition of Marketo integration specialists Tibco; the announcement of a strategic partnership with SAP, delivering native integration of Marketo into SAP CRM and Hybris Cloud for Customer; and perhaps dominating the day, the news that Marketo will run exclusively on the Google Cloud platform, with the ability to leverage the Tensor Flow AI software library. That's quite a lot to digest, and I haven't even mentioned the new UX experience, Marketo Sky, or the long-awaited re-emergence of year-old acquisition ToutApp as Marketo Sales Engage. But first the overview from Steve Lucas, who -- with all his zany digressions -- is one of the more entertaining keynote speakers among tech CEOs. One of Lucas's most striking remarks referred to the transition from CRM to "something entirely new."