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Adobe is making an aggressive move into Amazon’s cloud computing territory, expanding its Experience Platform onto AWS in a partnership that signals a major shift in how enterprises approach artificial intelligence and customer data.
The deal, announced last week at Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent conference, carries broader implications for the $500 billion cloud computing market than initially disclosed, Adobe leadership told VentureBeat.
The partnership emerges at a critical moment for digital commerce, as companies scramble to personalize customer experiences across an increasingly fragmented digital landscape. Recent data underscores this urgency: This year’s Cyber Monday saw mobile devices account for 57% of online sales, a dramatic increase from 33% five years ago, highlighting the rapid evolution of consumer behavior.
Cloud strategy meets customer experience: Why this partnership matters
“Brands are either partnering exclusively with a primary cloud provider or their strategy is to go with multiple cloud providers,” said Anjul Bhambhri, senior vice president of Adobe Experience Cloud, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “We want to meet customers where they are and offer flexibility in running their workloads on the cloud that supports their enterprise applications.”
The move carries particular significance for enterprises already heavily invested in AWS infrastructure. Organizations storing customer data in AWS services like S3, Redshift, or DynamoDB will now be able to activate that data for personalization without the complexity and latency of cross-cloud data transfers.
“Complexity, cost, and latency of moving or accessing data [are] reduce[d] dramatically,” Bhambhri said. “This means the ability to quickly ramp up personalized campaigns where experiences can be triggered based on customer actions that happened milliseconds ago.”
Breaking down data silos: How Adobe’s AWS integration changes customer engagement
A key differentiator in this offering is the integration of generative AI capabilities through the AEP AI Assistant. This conversational interface represents a significant democratization of enterprise marketing tools, allowing teams to interact with complex data and automation systems through natural language prompts.
Bhambhri provided a concrete example of the AI assistant’s capabilities, telling VentureBeat: “With simple text prompts, teams can greatly improve their productivity by getting answers to all product how-to questions when they need it, to query their customer data for insights, [and] to get answers to high- and low-performing segments and campaigns, getting recommendations on improving performance of their marketing activities.”
Leading enterprises including the Coca-Cola Company, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Major League Baseball, and Marriott International currently use Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) to power their customer experience initiatives. When the joint AWS offering becomes available in 2025, these and other organizations will have the option to leverage Adobe’s suite of applications — including Real-Time CDP, Journey Optimizer, and Customer Journey Analytics — directly within their AWS environment.
For retailers specifically, the platform offers sophisticated capabilities for real-time personalization. “A sporting goods company, for instance, can offer additional relevant products or accessories with a cohort of first-time buyers,” Bhambhri said. “Marketing teams within a brand can run different personalization campaigns simultaneously, based on different user attributes and actions.”
Fortune 500 early adopters: Major brands betting big on Adobe-AWS innovation
The implementation timeline appears aggressive, with Bhambhri indicating that some customers could be up and running in “from a few weeks to a month” with their initial use cases. However, the full solution won’t be available through the AWS Marketplace until calendar year 2025.
This partnership signals a broader trend in enterprise software: the move toward cloud-agnostic platforms that can operate seamlessly across different infrastructure providers. While Adobe maintains this won’t affect its relationships with other cloud providers, it represents a significant expansion of its AWS footprint.
The development comes as businesses face increasing pressure to deliver personalized experiences while managing complex data privacy requirements and technical infrastructure costs. By bringing Adobe Experience Platform to AWS, organizations can potentially streamline their tech stack while maintaining the sophisticated personalization capabilities needed in today’s digital marketplace.
For technical decision-makers, this partnership offers a clear path to scaling personalization initiatives while potentially reducing the operational complexity of managing cross-cloud data flows. However, the true test will come in 2025 when organizations begin implementing these solutions at scale.
