I feel comforted to read that I was not the only person who assumed Marketo would be acquired by Microsoft or SAP! 

The prolific martech acquirer, Vista Equity Partners, has also snapped up an event management platform, Cvent and automative focused software provider, Solera. 

This trio is a powerful combination of technologies for any enterprise organisation to harness. Whilst Solera focuses on automotive their CRM system could also compliment Marketo as a native offering. A quick review of clients for each company also indicates a diverse range that will be beneficial to Marketo, Solera or Cvent. 

To gain real competitive advantage Marketo's new owners would be wise to build CRM functionality within the current tool to further compete with Salesforce, IBM and Oracle.