SAP acquires Gigya for customer identity and access management

SAP Gigya to be combined with SAP Hybris to create all-encompassing cloud-based customer data platform

SAP has acquired customer identity and access management company Gigya in a deal that is believed to value the Mountain View, California-based company at around $350m.

The company's customer identify management claims to help organisations "build digital relationships with their customers", managing their profile (like a CRM system), but also their preferences, opt-ins (and outs) and consent settings.

With the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to come into full force in May next year, SAP sees Gigya's software as a potential solution for many customers.

Customers opt-in and register via Gigya's registration-as-a-service, which manages the various different privacy issues by territory and compliance requirements. Gigya claims that it currently manages 1.3 billion customer identities for its enterprise clients.

Gigya has been a SAP Hybris partner since 2013, and a number of SAP clients already use the software.

Gigya brings a wealth of skills and expertise that will significantly enhance the SAP Hybris Profile solution and allow us to take leadership of the emerging customer identity and access management market," said Carsten Thoma, president and co-founder of SAP Hybris.

An SAP Hybris statement added that it intends to become "the first organisation to offer a cloud-based data platform enabling companies to profile and convert new customers, gather accurate conclusions from disparate consumer engagement sources and collect data for enhanced consumer choices that are in line with regulations".

Patrick Salyer, CEO of Gigya, added: "Combining the data matching and enrichment capabilities of SAP Hybris Profile with Gigya's consent-based identity data and access management platform will allow us to identify consumers across channels and offer a robust single consumer profile.

"This is a vital step for digitalising businesses because companies need to be able to draw accurate conclusions seamlessly across all channels, including web, mobile, in-store or connected devices, and the Internet of Things, as well as collect data about consumer preferences.

"Together, we are uniquely positioned to drive more effective marketing, sales and service through data, while the customer stays in control of how much data is shared."

Gigya was founded more than ten years ago and raised its first round of venture funding in 2007. In total, the company has raised some $104m in venture funding from Intel Capital, Benchmark Capital and Advance Publications, the parent company of publisher Conde Nast, Intel Capital and Adobe Systems, among others, in several funding rounds. Its investors will therefore have made a good, if unspectacular, return from their investments.

In November 2014, the company's gigya.com domain was hijacked by the Syrian Electronic Army group of hackers. The company claims that no sensitive data was compromised in the attack.