• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 16, 2020

Merkle has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) 

Focused on AI and machine-learning, Merkle's cloud-based solutions offered through Amazon Web Services will help enterprises accelerate their data strategies and develop products and services for data and analytics. 

The two companies have worked together for nearly four years, but this collaboration has clear objectives and road map, Ankur Jain, senior vice president and strategy lead for Cloud Platforms at Merkle, told Search & Performance Marketing Daily.

The objectives focus on developing artificial intelligence and machine-learning, cloud-based solutions offered through the AWS Marketplace, establishing a Systems Integration Practice to enable customers to insource their tech stack with cloud-based data management solution, and assisting clients in entering the digital world through database modernization.

Jain said the company has seen a “significant uptick” in adoption of cloud services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Companies are realizing the difficulty in managing the data centers, especially in the middle of a pandemic,” he said.

Cloud services allow companies to manage their systems from home through a browser.

“We’re even seeing IT migrate to the cloud,” Jain said. “There are services we can bring to the table to help our IT counterparts.”

Merkle will offer its Rapid Audience Layer (RAL) through the AWS Marketplace and it will become available to all AWS customers, allowing them to in-source their technology stack.

Merkle helped one of its early clients, AARP, develop an enterprise-wide member and prospect database using AWS. The goal required transforming how the business operated and managed its data, insights, and content, synchronizing messages across multiple channels and streamlining its reporting.

With help from Merkle, AARP consolidated data across 650 million known prospects and 129 million members to support campaign management, real-time services, list-sourcing, and analytics capabilities. 

Security features are also taken into consideration, but each configuration depends on the company’s needs.

Merkle also supports clients that want to use Adobe, Google, Oracle, Microsoft and others.