SAP acquires identity management firm Gigya in a $350 million deal

SAP, the global enterprise software giant, has acquired Gingya, a firm that helps online properties manage customer identities and profiles in a $350 million deal to further strengthen its hybris e-commerce division. The identity management startup currently manages ~1.3 billion customer identities across hundreds of sites, existing business that it will bring under SAP’s umbrella. These features are expected to be integrated into SAP’s wider e-commerce operation to expand the kinds of services it offers to existing customers, and to help sell more e-commerce services to Gigya’s base.

Carsten Thoma, president and cofounder of SAP Hybris, said that “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. Consumer trust is the main currency to succeed for customer-driven organizations. This is what Gigya is known and recognized for”. Founded in 2006, Gigya originally started as a “social” log-in platform in which it helped online properties manage customer profiles as linked with their profiles on sites like Facebook. However, later the company started to widen out its view of the purpose of identity management and how it can be used for a wider set of customer management features for e-commerce and other sites.