Adobe's flexible approach to data composability in Real-Time CDP: Supporting customers with enterprise data warehouses.
09-30-2025
In today's data rich world, Adobe is committed to supporting customers in effectively accessing and leveraging cloud data warehouse investments.
We’ve observed increasing adoption of enterprise warehouses as the foundation for collecting, storing, and managing large volumes of customer data — including historical transactions and past interactions. Organizations are eager to use this data for a variety of purposes, from building data science models, to creating audiences for marketing activations to analyzing rich customer insights.
However, marketing teams typically require only a subset of warehouse data within the customer data platform while delivering relevant customer experiences based on real-time interactions in the critical moments that matter most.
Spectrum of warehouse usage.
When it comes to connecting a customer data platform to enterprise data warehouses, Adobe recognizes that data composability is a spectrum:
- 100% ingestion from warehouses: Ingesting data directly from enterprise warehouses into Adobe Experience Platform for audience creation and activation — enabling low-latency, in-the-moment experiences.
- 100% federation: Building audiences from warehouse datasets without copying underlying data, then using Adobe Experience Platform for enrichment and activation.
- Ingestion and federation: Supporting both ingestion and federation patterns to meet diverse dataset and use case requirements — this is the most common pattern we observe.
Adobe offers a flexible approach that enables customers to seamlessly navigate this spectrum of warehouse connectivity. Whether organizations are aiming to minimize data duplication, seeking a zero-copy solution for sensitive datasets, considering a composable CDP, or looking to power in-the-moment experiences, Adobe meets customers where they are — while providing pathways for growth, maturity, and enhanced performance.
Data composability use case patterns supported by federated audiences.
Enterprises investing in cloud data warehouse investments are increasingly interested in accessing their warehouses to build audiences without copying underlying datasets.
Adobe Real-Time CDP supports multiple use case patterns when activating and enriching these federated audiences:
- Audience creation: Build new audiences from enterprise datasets without copying underlying data and activate those audiences with prebuilt destinations.
Example: Build an audience of recently converted customers based on transaction data in the warehouse, then include these customers in a “welcome” email campaign. - Audience enrichment: Enrich existing audiences in Adobe Experience Platform by utilizing composed audience data federated from the enterprise data warehouse.
Example: Enrich an audience of logged-in cart abandoners by overlapping these users with the audience of recently converted customers. Send a promotional offer to encourage conversion. - Profile enrichment: Allow enterprise audiences to be retained as attributes within actionable Adobe Experience Platform profiles to power real-time experiences triggered by inbound customer event signals.
Example: Deliver same-page personalization the next time a member of the recently converted cart abandoner audience visits the site.
Data composability in action.
A leading telecommunication company’s partnership with Real-Time CDP showcases the benefits of Adobe's composable data approach:
Business objective
The Adobe customer wanted to enable real-time experiences by selecting a CDP that combines federated data with streaming ingestion, allowing them to bypass complex data migration and utilize their existing data warehouse investment for faster time to value and improved operational efficiency.
They needed to establish a unified platform for core audience creation and segmentation across teams, enabling consistent, omni-channel targeting of high-value customers and personalized experiences. Finally, they sought technology with a focus on future marketer empowerment, enabling self-service capabilities within controlled environments to reduce reliance on multiple teams.
Investing in Adobe
Adobe Real-Time CDP enabled federated audiences and real-time activation, allowing for timely, personalized audience engagement based on the customer’s marketing use cases.
The customer achieved operational efficiency across the marketing organization by federating audiences from Snowflake — directly leveraging valuable, pre-existing consolidated data for audience creation and activation without having to move data to another system.
By selecting Adobe Real-Time CDP, this telecommunication customer took a strategic, platform-centric approach, paving the way for future operational efficiency and a simplified MarTech stack through a single system for audience management and cross-channel activations.
Delivering value
The customer took audience creation and activation from weeks to minutes using Real-Time CDP and audience federation capabilities to achieve business goals and drive time to value. They accelerated time to value by achieving an initial audience build-out within one day by quickly establishing a secure connection for data access from Snowflake. Streamlined audience management allowed them to build audiences centrally for activation across all channels, resulting in simplified workflows.
With Real-Time CDP's ability to process millions of profiles in minutes, the customer executed faster segmentation and richer personalization at scale across all channels.
Addressing technical needs and customer experience.
Adobe's flexible support for enterprise data warehouses addresses both technical needs and customer experience use cases through federation capabilities in Adobe Real-Time CDP and Adobe Journey Optimizer. We provide data engineering teams with the control to:
- Leverage existing data warehouse investments to power marketing use cases.
- Utilize only the data needed to meet low-latency experience demands.
- Maintain privacy and security needs by keeping sensitive data within enterprise systems.
- Manage and coordinate marketing audiences in a unified system for multi-channel activation.
These controls allow organizations to meet marketing requirements at scale:
- Create and enrich audiences and profiles using critical, actionable enterprise data for effective personalization.
- Access relevant audience data through a marketer-friendly UI for marketing activities.
- Ensure immediate availability of essential audience data for cross-channel, in-the-moment experiences.
- Consolidate and activate marketing audiences within a single system for consistent and streamlined delivery.
Adobe's flexible approach to supporting the spectrum of data composability empowers businesses to leverage their data investments effectively. Adobe can cater to customers who wish to activate data residing in their warehouse without data copy. Adobe can also help customers go far beyond these use cases by utilizing data from the warehouse alongside the full breadth of capabilities in our customer data platform.
This flexibility helps minimize data duplication and supports zero-copy data solutions without compromising enterprise-wide objectives or opportunities to drive value.
With support for use case patterns such as audience creation, audience enrichment, and profile enrichment, Adobe ensures businesses can deliver personalized, real-time experiences while meeting both technical and marketing needs.
Adobe offers a flexible comprehensive solution for modern data-driven enterprises.
Learn more about our approach to working with warehouses here.
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