Teradata has announced its intent to acquire Aprimo for $525 million. Given, IBM’s acquisition of Unica, this scenario was always a matter of when rather than if, and continues the consolidation of the marketing automation platform (MAP) market.

While Teradata has largely flown under the radar as a marketing automation platform provider for B2B organizations, many large B2C enterprises have leveraged Teradata’s potent combination of marketing automation (both its own and through partnerships) and data warehouse technologies to establish tight integration and access to customer data. With the increased focus from B2B marketers on the power of their data and the requirements for advanced analytics, more scalable vendor choices in this area can only be positive.

Since Teradata has been trying broaden its appeal, the Aprimo acquisition will not only help its marketing technology solution — particularly from a SaaS, lead nurturing and MRM perspective — but should also make it a more palatable choice for B2B organizations and CMOs. For the time being, Aprimo will continue to market its products and services under its own name.

Saying that the marketing automation platform market will continue to consolidate has become a bit of a cliche; it’s been far more interesting to see the types of vendors that choose to acquire a marketing automation platform provider and debate who’s next.