LAS VEGAS -- SAP TechEd 2017 -- SAP is looking to its acquisition of Gigya to provide enterprises with a unified view of the customer, no matter what channel the customer does business in.

SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP) announced its intent on Sunday to acquire Gigya, which provides customer identity and access management tools, for a reported $350 million.

The Gigya acquisition will help SAP enable enterprises to manage customer data, said SAP CEO Bill McDermott on Sunday at an event in New York streamed by video to the SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas.

By integrating Gigya with SAP's own tools, enterprises will be able to connect sales, marketing and ERP applications to provide a "real, single, personalized view of the customer," McDermott said.

The Gigya acquisition will help SAP enable "omnichannel" sales -- sales across all channels, including digital, mobile, and stores -- as well as direct-to-consumer sales, which is a requirement for every company, McDermott said.

Figure 1: SAP CEO Bill McDermott

Keep up with the latest enterprise cloud news and insights. Sign up for the weekly Enterprise Cloud News newsletter.

The Gigya platform helps companies build digital relationships with customers, managing profiles, preferences, opt-in and consent settings, with customers controlling their own data.

"Customers opt in and register via Gigya's registration-as-a-service, which addresses changing geographical privacy issues and manages compliance requirements such as the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Gigya currently manages 1.3 billion customer identities in order to build identity-driven relationships for its enterprise clients," SAP said in a statement Sunday.

Gigya has 300 employees, all of whom will join SAP in the deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, according to TechCrunch.

The companies did not disclose terms of the deal but the Jerusalem Post and several other sources put the price tag at $350 million. Gigya is a US company that was founded in Israel.

Related posts: