ORLANDO, Florida – Microsoft, SAP, and Adobe launched a boldly-named Open Data Initiative to provide a blueprint for the sharing of data between their respective applications and platforms. The main goal of the initiative is to lower barriers between customer experience management silos.

The initiative encapsulates interoperability and data exchange between Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, SAP’s C/4HANA and S/4HANA platforms, and Adobe’s Experience Cloud. The data model uses a common data lake service running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

The initiative supports the movement of transactional, operational, customer, or IoT data between the data lake and a customer’s operations. This provides an organization with a single view of its customers and allows it to more easily enact privacy and security initiatives for that data.

“The data that is available in every company is super rich. Clearly there is a big data opportunity. Except there is this small data challenge. That is that all of this data is trapped in silos,” explained Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in describing the initiative at this week’s Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida. “The real challenge is to be able to bring all of this data together so the company is in control.”

The initiative allows organizations to own and maintain control of the data resources. They can also use artificial intelligence-driven business processes to glean insight and intelligence from the data. The open concept also invites an ecosystem approach that allows other vendors to tap into and add to the data model.

“Customers won’t work with companies that don’t get it,” added SAP CEO Bill McDermott, who joined Nadella on stage at the keynote. “And 'getting it' means that data can’t be trapped in silos. They need to connect the end-to-end consumer experience. You have to have the data, and it has to be open.”

Microsoft and SAP late last year announced plans to deploy each other’s cloud solutions internally. That included Microsoft running SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud on Microsoft Azure to allow customers to run SAP S/4HANA in a secure, managed cloud.

Photo: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaking at this week's Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida.