While tech giants can certainly work alone, there are circumstances that teaming up is the only way out.
This can be seen when Adobe has once again partnered with Microsoft to help each other's sales and software capabilities, taking a shot to compete with Salesforce, a common rival popular for its CRM product as well as other enterprise solutions.
Here, Microsoft bolsters Adobe's marketing software, allowing users to find and target teams of potential customers for business goods on LinkedIn, the social network owned by Microsoft.
So for example, if an Adobe customer is a supplier of medical equipment to hospitals, the partnership would make it easier for Adobe users to target potential buyers that may include doctors, technicians and finance managers of hospitals, through tailored LinkedIn ads.
And when there is a match, the user can then use Microsoft's sales software to help with the deal.
Adobe, best known as the creator of Photoshop, the popular graphics editor, has long target end-users and marketers which rely on its arrays of software for creating marketing materials.
Microsoft on the other hand, is best known for its Windows operating system and Office applications. The tech giant is also growing its own software to track deals, called Dynamic 365, and LinkedIn, the social media it acquired back in 2016, which has become a common tool for sales people.
In short, Adobe is where marketing gets created, and Microsoft is where things would get sold.
By teaming up, the two are benefiting each other when competing against Salesforce, the the cloud software company that offers both sales and marketing software, something that Adobe and Microsoft lack one or the other.
According to Steve Lucas, Adobe’s senior vice president of digital experience, the social media LinkedIn is one of those "clear holy grails" for business marketers. With it becoming the largest B2B community of the web, LinkedIn has become "a huge lever" for marketers.
With the partnership, both Adobe and Microsoft put a lot on the table, bringing together several data sources to give users better insight about teams and key people that make buying decisions.
The companies said that the goal is to create a more personalized and targeted experience for sales teams.
The LinkedIn integration also seeks to build richer profiles in applications like Adobe’s Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales.
"The ability to leverage the power of data to find the right opportunities and use insights helps marketing and sales to plan their next move with a member of the buying committee," explained said Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president of business applications and global industry at Microsoft, in a statement.
"Together with Adobe and LinkedIn, Microsoft can help to deliver an end-to-end solution that ultimately accelerates lead conversion and can create opportunities for improved servicing and better cross sell, resulting in higher lifetime value of the account."
Following this news, Adobe shares went up 0.8 percent pre-market, and Microsoft gained 0.5 percent, while Salesforce was also up at 1 percent.
Previously, Adobe and Microsoft teamed up when launching a deeper integration of Adobe PDF capabilities into Office 365 apps, among others.