Leading Innovators Unveil the Marketing Cloud to Catalyze the Business Impact of Marketing
Next Generation of Interoperable Business Services Dramatically Boosts Marketing Efficiency and Effectiveness
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – November 19, 2009 – ON24, Inc., Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference – Nov. 19, 2009 – Leading marketing-oriented technology companies today announced the formation of the Marketing Cloud™, a set of open, interoperable and secure services that make internal marketing operations more efficient and external marketing programs more effective. Founded as an alliance between Alfresco, Demandbase, Hoovers (a D&B company), Marketo, Jigsaw, ON24 and PivotLink, the Marketing Cloud delivers the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way for marketers to integrate data silos, automate processes, foster collaboration and develop actionable marketing insights.
The announcement was made today at Dreamforce 2009, the “cloud computing event of the year”. More than 600 salesforce.com customers and Marketing Cloud enthusiasts will celebrate the launch tonight from 6:00 – 8:30 p.m. at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. RSVP at marketing-cloud.com or by visiting partners that are showcasing complementary Marketing Cloud solutions at the Dreamforce Expo.
Marketing in the Cloud
The Marketing Cloud achieves the benefits of Enterprise cloud computing and complements the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud pioneered by salesforce.com. Cloud computing offers the promise of fast, easy access to the next generation of complementary business services – a perfect environment for marketing teams that face a shortage of time, money and IT resources.
At the same time, cloud computing is transforming the way marketing gets done today. Buyers are spending more time online, interacting with like-minded colleagues and friends over social networks and accessing or sharing dynamic content in the cloud.
The Marketing Cloud reflects the convergence of these trends. It helps marketers drive demand for their solutions and assess the effectiveness of their marketing programs, while eliminating the cost, risk and complexity of traditional marketing tools. Because marketing spans a broad spectrum of multi-faceted functions, the Marketing Cloud can only be delivered by combining open, interoperable and secure marketing-related services across multiple categories, including business intelligence (BI), community, content management, lead generation, lists and data hygiene, marketing automation, online meetings, and virtual events — with more services being added over time.
Get Ahead in the Marketing Cloud
Marketing Cloud partners share a common vision for improving business performance with cloud-based marketing solutions that are scalable, secure, cost-effective, and easy-to-use. Each company is contributing innovative technology and unparalleled domain expertise to the Marketing Cloud ecosystem.
“Modern marketing is moving from being interrupt driven to inbound and content driven, where a prospect searches for, socializes and blogs around content,” said Dr. Ian Howells, CMO, Alfresco Software, the leader in the open source enterprise content management market. “The Marketing Cloud allows us to move from a siloed marketing infrastructure to one where marketing can combine open, shared, cloud-based services. Alfresco provides the cloud content services for the Marketing Cloud and is excited to be part of driving this new initiative, expanding the use of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS).”
“Marketing effectiveness is no longer about the number of clicks – it’s about traffic quality, conversion, sales pipeline and revenue,” said Chris Golec, CEO, Demandbase, a leading provider of B2B customer acquisition solutions. “The Cloud provides our customers with the infrastructure and scalability that is needed to map 100 million Web site visitors every month with 120 business databases and target customer profiles from 25,000 users. Sales and marketing professionals benefit by our ability to economically identify, reach and convert high quality traffic that would otherwise go untouched.”
“We are eager to work with other industry leaders on building the Marketing Cloud for our customers,” said Peter Poulin, EVP of Marketing for Hoover’s.
“We are committed to providing marketing and sales teams with the most cutting edge tools for facilitating business transactions and generating high-quality leads,” said Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw, the industry leader in Data as a Service (DaaS) and business information. “Our participation in the Marketing Cloud furthers this commitment by allowing us to not only leverage the power of the cloud but also our valuable partnerships to transform and improve the way companies are managing and executing their marketing campaigns from start to finish.”
“As cloud-based computing takes over the enterprise, marketing must not be left behind,” said Jon Miller, VP Marketing, Marketo, the revenue-focused marketing automation company. “By working with other innovative marketing leaders, the Marketing Cloud will enable Marketo to provide the next-generation of powerful and easy solutions that drive revenue and increase marketing accountability.”
“The significance of this consortium is that it brings together the various leaders in this space who together offer a complete solution for marketing in the cloud,” said Denise Persson, CMO, ON24, the global leader in webcasting and virtual events. “We welcome the opportunity to educate the market about the solution we represent.”
“Marketers need an end-to-end view of the entire demand creation to revenue process to measure what matters and align marketing with business goals,” said Dyke Hensen, CMO, PivotLink, the leader in on-demand business intelligence. “The Marketing Cloud is a dramatic step forward in cloud computing, giving marketers the power to improve business performance with best-in-class marketing solutions that are enhanced by the sophisticated analytics in our communication and collaboration platform.”
Marketers: Get Your Head in the Cloud
Join the new Marketing Cloud community at marketing-cloud.com to learn about the Marketing Cloud partners, contribute to the definition of the Marketing Cloud and participate in lively discussions with experts about breakthrough marketing strategies and best practices. Members can register for updates, test drive the solutions, access the knowledgebase and attend virtual events.
Follow the Marketing Cloud and take part in discussions on Twitter using the hashtag #mktgcloud or join the conversation on LinkedIn or Facebook.
About the Marketing Cloud
The Marketing Cloud™ is a set of open, interoperable and secure services that make internal marketing operations more efficient and external marketing programs more effective. Founded as an alliance between Alfresco, Demandbase, Hoovers (a D&B company), Marketo, Jigsaw, ON24 and PivotLink, the Marketing Cloud delivers the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way for B2B marketers to build and run marketing campaigns by integrating data silos, automating marketing processes and creating actionable marketing insights.
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Marketing Cloud and the Marketing Cloud logo are trademarked and other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. This press release is for informational purposes only and no offer to buy or solicitation of an offer to sell any securities is made hereby. The forward-looking statements in this release are subject to unknown risks and uncertainties and do not constitute guarantees of future performance. The actual results, performance or achievements of the company may differ materially from the results, performance or achievements of the company expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.