The battle of the marketing clouds is hotting up with Oracle announcing the launch of its Adaptive Intelligence Applications (AIA) – a plug and play artificial intelligence solution. According to Will Griffith, Regional VP Sales, Marketing Cloud, Oracle, who spoke to Business Line on the sidelines of the Oracle Open World event in Delhi, the AIA is smart, will work in real time, and is as easy to use as an app on the phone.

“A lot of artificial intelligence propositions in the marketplace give you a tool kit. Not a plug and play solution. Our AI app is like a mobile phone app. You just need to plug it in and it connects with Oracle cloud solutions, whether in Marketing, ERP, Sales or Service, and is ready to go,” he says.

To be launched later this year, among AIA’s first apps will be a marketing one called Adaptive Intelligence Offers. Griffith describes how if a company uses this in conjunction with its own first party data and third party data provided by the Oracle Data Cloud it could dramatically improve results for digital marketers. To put it simply, a company can use AI Offers powered by real time analytics to deliver targeted advertising or customized offers on e-commerce sites.

The Oracle Data Cloud that came about after Oracle’s acquisition of BlueKai, a data management platform, has more than 5 billion global consumer and business IDs and is a wealth of information.

The marketing cloud battleground in which Adobe, IBM, Salesforce and Oracle are the four big players is of late seeing the introduction of artificial intelligence solutions riding on big data. Adobe, for instance, has recently launched Adobe Sensei, a machine learning platform that is getting embedded in all its offerings to power digital experiences. IBM meanwhile is riding on Watson’s cognitive capabilities to offer personalization solutions to marketers.

Acquisitions Galore

Oracle, Griffith reveals, is also betting on acquisitions to offer a more comprehensive suite of solutions. For instance, the company has announced the acquisition of Moat, a digital ad measurement company just last month. The deal has been valued at $850 million according to reports. In the past, Oracle has acquired Eluquoa, a marketing automation platform, Responsys, an email marketing solution, and Datalogix, an analytics firm.

Its rival Adobe too has done a spate of acquisitions – the latest being TubeMogul, a video advertising platform.

According to analysts, these acquisitions are a way to solve the problem of a fragmented vendor landscape in the MarTech space. Says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO, GreyHouund Research, “The aim that all behold is one and simple - to be the most comprehensive marketing cloud technology company.

He says while the early mover advantage is clearly with Adobe, other vendors have made enough and more noise in the recent past. “After Adobe and Salesforce, Oracle comes across as the most aggressive in terms of their intent to acquire a dominant space in MarTech by the way of acquisitions including the likes of Eluqoa, Responsys, Datalogix among others,” he says.

“More specifically, the decision to acquire BlueKai for data management has proved to be a differentiator,” he adds.