This article was originally written by Avanade alum Brian Randrup.

The release of v8 has brought significant changes in the engine room of Adobe Campaign.

The name
There is an expression that goes "cute kids have many names". This holds true for Adobe Campaign as well. Adobe Campaign has had multiple versions and names over the years as development has kept the strong platform up to date with the market. I will skip forward to the latest iteration, Adobe Campaign v8. This is now officially being branded as simply "Adobe Campaign". Gone is the “Classic” label…. Adobe Campaign… sweet and simple.

Now for the exciting parts. Adobe is bringing highly sought-after capabilities meant to support organizations dealing with high volumes of data.

Highlights of Adobe Campaign v8:

• Significantly faster runtime of workflows
• Up to 200 million customer profiles
• Up to 20 million/per hour batch emails
• Up to 1 million/per hour transactional emails
• Compatible with Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)
• Managed Cloud only
• Accessible via web browser

I will walk you through some of these key improvements.

New engine
Earlier versions of Adobe Campaign have been powered by PostgreSQL as database engine which has proved to be a bottleneck when executing very high-volume campaigns. In version 8, Adobe Campaign leverages the advantages of two database engines: Snowflake and PostgreSQL; delivering a scalable platform and supporting organizations with high volumes of data.

A key reason behind the significantly better performance is the support of Snowflake as database engine. Adobe Campaign connects to Snowflake through a Full Federated Data Access (FFDA) providing a scalable solution. This results in a marketing solution that:

• Scale the volume of data you can handle. Supporting up to 200 million customer profiles in a single implementation.
• Scale the performance of queries for segmentation and targeting but also data ingestion and egress.
• Scale the delivery preparation (from hours to minutes).

Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)
Adobe Campaign v8 supports Adobe Experience Platform and vice versa. Define your segmentation in AEP and send your communications using Adobe Campaign. Gain access to delivery and tracking logs generated in Adobe Campaign by synchronizing with AEP enabling analysts to track and analyse trends in user generated data including the ability to connect with other data.

Managed cloud only
Adobe Campaign v8 is only available through Adobe’s Managed Cloud service. This differs slightly from v7 which could be available as either on-premise or managed cloud.

Managed Cloud by Adobe offers a variety of advantages. Back-up and recovery of configurations and customer data, upgrades and patching, and self-service control panel to manage administrative tasks.

Accessible via web browser
In earlier versions of Adobe Campaign users could only access the solution by having the Client Console application installed locally on their PC. Now, in v8 users can access the platform through the already mentioned Client Console and the new Thin Client. The addition of the thin client enables users to perform campaign activities through a web browser without having to install anything locally.

If you’re looking for help or advice on this, or anything Adobe Campaign related, feel free to email me or reach out to me via LinkedIn.

References:

1. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/campaign/campaign-v8/config/architecture/ffda/enterprise-deployment.html?lang=en
2. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/campaign/campaign-v8/connect/ac-aep.html?lang=en
3. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/campaign/campaign-v8/new/ac-components.html?lang=en#presentation-layer
4. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/journey-optimizer/assets/AJO-FAQ.pdf?lang=en