Adobe announced plans to acquire Magento Commerce for $1.68 billion, integrating it into the Adobe Experience Cloud on a single platform for B2B and B2C customers globally. The transaction is expected to close later this year and make Adobe more competitive with market leader Salesforce and its Demandware ecommerce platform.
Magento’s cloud-based platform ties together digital commerce, order management and predictive intelligence, enabling ecommerce across a wide range of verticals. It’s one of the top ecommerce platform providers for small-to-medium sized merchant companies; other competitors include Shopify, BigCommerce, SAP Hybris and Oracle/NetSuite.
“Adobe’s acquisition of Magento Commerce continues to demonstrate how integral commerce is to the customer experience,” said Scott Webb, President of Avionos. “Similar to the Salesforce acquisitions of Demandware and CloudCraze, we continue to see customer experience platform providers recognize that an integrated customer journey includes a rich shopping experience.”
The unification of B2B and B2C ecommerce in a single platform provides “a more holistic and seamless approach to the customer experience that reaches across multiple touchpoints,” Webb added. “It’s important for businesses to own the ecommerce experience and the customer from end to end and not outsource or give up margins, and this move enables Adobe to do just that.”
Magento brings Adobe Experience Cloud digital commerce enablement and order orchestration for both physical and digital goods across several industries. Major brands using Magento include Canon, Helly Hansen, Paul Smith and Rosetta Stone.
Once the deal closes, Magento CEO Mark Lavelle will continue to lead Magento as part of Adobe’s Digital Experience business, reporting to Brad Rencher, the company’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Digital Experience.
“Adobe and Magento share a vision for the future of digital experiences that brings together Adobe’s strength in content and data with Magento’s open commerce innovation,” said Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento. “We’re excited to join Adobe and believe this will be a great opportunity for our customers, partners and the developer community.”
Founded in 2008, Magento was acquired by eBay in 2011 for a reported $180 million. The company then went private in 2015 with help from Permira Funds, which sources say paid around $200 million, according to Tech Crunch. Today’s news equals quite the payday for Magento’s investors.