Adobe to Acquire Software Firm Marketo for $4.75B

Adobe Systems Inc, the San Jose-based company will buy Marketo, a marketing software firm for $4.75B. The announcement was made public on Thursday.In a highly competitive market where big players like Microsoft Corp, Salesforce, and Oracle Corp. are already dominating in the field of cloud business, Adobe will try to make the most out of the acquisition by bolstering their marketing tools and focus more on capturing the market.

This acquisition is the largest ever deal for adobe. During the fourth quarter of the company’s fiscal year, the acquisition will come to an end. After the deal ends, Steve Lucas, CEO of Marketo will become a member of adobe’s senior leadership team and will also continue to lead Marketo’s team.

Both the companies will be benefitted from each other in many ways — Marketo’s B2B marketing application will be helpful for Adobe’s marketing business. The B2B marketing application provides cloud-based tools to help create manage and analyze advertising and marketing campaigns.

In 2006, Marketo was an email servicing company and in 2016 Vista took over Marketo for $1.8 B. According to report, in 2017, Marketo generate revenues of about $321M.  The 2016 acquisition changed the whole management team of Marketo — a former SAP SE executive, Lucas was made the CEO, who helped the company to recover their sales growth.

It will be interesting to see how Adobe will take from here.