Limelight Networks announced the next generation of its Limelight Orchestrate Digital Presence Platform that is designed to support consistent, high-performance digital experiences across channels, devices, and geographies. The Orchestrate V2.5 platform addresses the challenges presented by increased and unpredictable content consumption and the need to support an ever-expanding variety of mobile devices, according to company officials.

In recent testing, validated by third parties, Limelight demonstrated up to an 8x web site performance improvement, translating into an 88% reduction in web site visitor wait time, explained Kirby Wadsworth, CMO, in an interview with Demand Gen Report.

Marketo announced the Dialog Edition, a new solution designed to help email marketers transition from traditional email marketing to automated email campaigns.

“The ‘slash and blast’ approach to email marketing is becoming less and less effective,” said Jon Miller, VP Marketing Content Strategy for Marketo, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “Email marketers want to develop personalized, long-term campaigns to engage buyers, but they need an easier way to accomplish that goal. This product is aimed at marketers who are currently using an email service provider and want to move from a manual approach to an automated process for email campaign management.”

Oracle announced that it has closed a deal to acquire Compendium, a cloud-based content marketing vendor. Experts say the combination of Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud and Compendium highlights the rising prominence of content marketing and the need to automate content delivery across all channels.

“Oracle’s acquisition of Compendium further solidifies their dedication to modern marketing and will complement their existing Eloqua marketing cloud nicely,” noted Justin Lowe, VP of Marketing at Couch & Associates, in a statement to Demand Gen Report.

Influitive announced the launch of Influitive Referrals, a B2B referral solution designed to help marketers generate more sales-ready leads from customers and partners.

Influitive Referrals, which is integrated with Salesforce and LinkedIn, can suggest potential referral names from your advocate’s social networks.

CRM systems have long been the hub of sales activity, but they are becoming an increasingly important tool for marketers.

The evolution of CRM platforms has coincided with the integration of sales and marketing teams, in which marketers are playing a larger role throughout the sales cycle. In addition to generating leads, marketers are being tasked with ensuring those leads result in sales, and the CRM remains the central source of sales activity.

Brainshark, a provider of cloud-based business presentations software and solutions, announced that its Brainshark On-Demand application has been integrated with Salesforce Identity to enable access through a single sign-on.

Access to Salesforce and Brainshark through one log-in screen makes it convenient for users to access their apps while also allowing administrators an easier way to manage access across multiple apps, Brainshark officials noted.

Lattice Engines announced the Lattice Data Cloud, which is designed to bring together web, social and proprietary buying signals to deliver predictive insights to marketing and sales.

The Lattice Data Cloud combines information from tens of thousands of data sources, millions of web sites, dozens of social sites and in-depth third-party data on more than 30 million businesses.

A new class of vendors is emerging to help marketers improve their customer databases, according to a new report from Raab Associates. The Guide to Customer Data Platforms describes systems that give marketers control of building customer databases to support cross-channel marketing programs.

Unlike traditional marketing automation systems, these products do not necessarily deliver marketing messages, according to David M. Raab, Principal of Raab Associates and author of the report. Instead, they provide shared data and analytics to coordinate and optimize messages delivered by multiple channel systems.