Analyst(s): Krista Case
Publication Date: September 11, 2024
Salesforce, a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM) software, has agreed to acquire Own Company for approximately $1.9 billion. This strategic acquisition would mark a significant move by Salesforce to further strengthen its data protection and cybersecurity offerings, especially in the rapidly evolving SaaS (Software as a Service) ecosystem. As businesses increasingly rely on cloud-based applications, the need for robust data backup, recovery, and cybersecurity solutions has never been greater.
What Is Covered in This Article:
- Salesforce’s Planned $1.9 Billion Acquisition of Own Company
- The Growing Importance of Cyber Resilience
- Own Company’s Expanded Capabilities
- Impact on the Broader Data Protection Ecosystem
- Future Prospects for Salesforce Customers
The News: Salesforce has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Own Company for approximately $1.9 billion. The acquisition aims to enhance Salesforce’s capabilities in the data protection space, providing customers with more robust backup and recovery solutions for their Salesforce environments. The move comes as businesses increasingly seek integrated data protection as an extension of their SaaS applications, ensuring the safety of their critical data in the face of potential cyber threats, system outages, and compliance requirements.
Salesforce to Acquire Own Company for Data Protection, Cyber Resilience
Analyst Take: Own Company, known for its expertise in protecting Salesforce workloads as well as its expanding compliance, cybersecurity, and data resiliency functionalities, would bring significant value to Salesforce’s existing portfolio. The acquisition follows the July 2024 CrowdStrike outages, which underscored the need for organizations to strengthen their cyber resilience strategies. With Own Company under its wing, Salesforce would provide a more comprehensive and integrated solution to meet the growing demands of enterprise customers, particularly those in highly regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.
Salesforce’s Acquisition of Own Company Improves SaaS Data Protection Offerings
Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company for $1.9 billion would mark an important move in the SaaS ecosystem, particularly in data protection and cyber resilience. As businesses migrate their critical operations to the cloud, the importance of safeguarding their SaaS applications, such as Salesforce and Microsoft 365, has grown significantly. This acquisition addresses the increasing need for built-in, enterprise-grade data protection capabilities within SaaS platforms. Historically, companies have relied on third-party vendors to secure their data, but with this acquisition, Salesforce is moving to centralize these features within its ecosystem. This reduces customer complexity while seamlessly integrating backup, recovery, and cybersecurity tools.
What makes this acquisition particularly significant is the timing. Recent high-profile outages and cyberattacks, such as the July 2024 CrowdStrike incident, have highlighted the vulnerability of cloud-based services to disruptions. These events have acted as catalysts, pushing businesses to evaluate their cyber resilience strategies. By acquiring Own Company, Salesforce would be able to offer enhanced data protection solutions that address routine data loss and safeguard against systemic risks such as outages or ransomware attacks. Own Company’s expertise in data resiliency and cybersecurity ensures that Salesforce can deliver a more comprehensive solution likely to appeal to customers in highly regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government.
Moreover, this acquisition would shake up the broader data protection ecosystem. Companies such as Veeam, Acronis, and other third-party providers have long offered Salesforce-specific data protection solutions. With Salesforce now providing its in-house capabilities, these third-party vendors may face stiffer competition. However, given the fragmented nature of enterprise data protection, where multiple solutions often coexist, Salesforce’s move is unlikely to displace external providers. Instead, it could lead to more streamlined offerings where companies use Salesforce’s built-in tools in combination with specialized third-party solutions.
Overall, Salesforce’s acquisition of Own Company is a bold step toward offering more integrated, cloud-native data protection. It signals Salesforce’s commitment to meeting evolving customer demands for secure, resilient, and compliant SaaS applications in an increasingly volatile cybersecurity landscape.
The Maturing SaaS Market and Data Protection
The SaaS market has seen exponential growth over the last decade, with applications such as Microsoft 365 (M365), Salesforce, and Google Workspace becoming central to modern business operations. These cloud-based platforms allow organizations to manage data, collaborate across teams, and streamline operations. However, with the rise in the adoption of SaaS applications, the challenges associated with securing data have also evolved.
The traditional reliance on native features such as recycle bins or basic data recovery options is no longer adequate for protecting business-critical applications. As enterprises move from on-premises data storage to cloud solutions, the demand for advanced data protection strategies has become evident. This is particularly notable for SaaS apps that house sensitive customer information, intellectual property, and other business-critical data. Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company would directly respond to this increasing need for comprehensive data protection, ensuring customers can safeguard their operations against potential data loss, cyberattacks, and compliance breaches.
Cyber Resilience: A Key Driver of the Acquisition
One of the major drivers behind this acquisition is the growing importance of cyber resilience. As cyberattacks become more sophisticated and frequent, organizations are pressured to strengthen their cybersecurity strategies. According to several reports, cyberattacks, ransomware, and data breaches have accelerated the need for robust data protection and recovery solutions.
While cyberattacks have long been a concern for businesses, the July 2024 CrowdStrike outages caused significant disruptions and served as a wake-up call for many organizations. This event highlighted the importance of availability and resiliency in the face of a variety of outages, as well as the need for organizations to have contingency plans to maintain business continuity.
In this context, Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company signals its commitment to providing customers with a more comprehensive data protection solution. Own Company’s capabilities would enhance Salesforce’s existing data backup and recovery tools, ensuring that customers can protect their Salesforce implementations from data loss or downtime caused by cyber incidents or system outages.
Expanding Data Protection as a Feature Extension
As SaaS customers increasingly demand integrated data protection as part of their cloud application purchases, Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company would enable it to offer more advanced data protection services as an extension of its platform. SaaS customers expect their cloud applications to come equipped with built-in data protection features, reducing the need for external third-party solutions.
Historically, Salesforce has made strides in offering essential data protection tools, but acquiring Own Company would allow for a more robust and complete solution. Own Company brings a wealth of expertise in workload support, compliance, cybersecurity, and data resilience. With these enhanced capabilities, Salesforce would then be able to provide its customers with comprehensive solutions beyond traditional data recovery, including advanced features such as compliance tools designed to meet strict regulatory requirements.
In particular, Salesforce customers operating in highly regulated industries—such as finance, healthcare, and government—stand to benefit the most from this acquisition. These sectors require stringent data protection and compliance measures, which Own Company’s platform can help deliver.
Own Company’s Expanded Workload and Adjacent Functionality
Own Company has been expanding its workload support, including adding protection for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Workday NetSuite, ServiceNow, and on-premise databases and file servers. Post-acquisition, it would be likely that the platform would again become focused on Salesforce specifically. However, continuing to expand functionalities in areas including compliance, cybersecurity, and data resiliency would likely be a focus in response to enterprise requirements for cyber-resiliency. For example, Own Company’s expanded support for compliance would help Salesforce customers navigate the complex landscape of data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States.
By bringing Own Company into the fold, Salesforce would deliver a data protection approach encompassing multiple facets of cybersecurity, compliance, and resiliency, demonstrating commitment to ensuring that Salesforce customers have the tools to protect their data in the increasingly complex digital and security landscapes.
Implications for the Broader Data Protection Ecosystem
Salesforce’s acquisition of Own Company would likely have ripple effects across the broader data protection ecosystem. In recent years, several significant players in the data protection space have introduced functionality explicitly aimed at protecting Salesforce data. Companies like Veeam, Acronis, and Rubrik have developed specialized solutions for backing up and restoring Salesforce environments, recognizing the growing demand for these capabilities.
Salesforce’s intentions to enhance its native data protection capabilities via Own Backup are likely in response to Salesforce customer demand for data protection capabilities as an extension of their SaaS buy. The Futurum Group recognizes that the data protection market is highly fragmented, with many enterprises relying on multiple solutions to meet their various data protection needs. As such, while Salesforce may offer a compelling solution for its customers, opportunity in the space will remain for third-party providers.
Conclusion: A Strategic Move to Strengthen Data Protection
Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company for $1.9 billion represents a strategic move to strengthen its position in the rapidly growing SaaS data protection market. As businesses continue to rely on cloud-based applications to manage their operations, the importance of robust data protection, cybersecurity, and compliance solutions cannot be overstated.
With Own Company’s expanding capabilities in areas such as compliance, cybersecurity, and data resiliency, Salesforce would be well positioned to offer its customers a more comprehensive and integrated data protection solution. This acquisition would enhance Salesforce’s data protection capabilities and align with enterprises seeking built-in, cloud-native solutions to protect their business-critical applications.
Looking ahead, Salesforce’s customers can expect a more robust suite of tools to protect their data and ensure business continuity, even in the face of cyber threats and system outages. As the SaaS market matures, this planned acquisition reinforces Salesforce’s commitment to address its customers’ evolving needs.
In the coming months, monitoring how this acquisition impacts Salesforce’s product roadmap and how the broader data protection ecosystem responds to this development will be essential. One thing is clear: Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Own Company is a significant step toward providing its customers with the tools they need to navigate data protection challenges in the cloud era.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Krista Case brings over 15 years of experience providing research and advisory services and creating thought leadership content. Her vantage point spans technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her work has appeared in major publications including eWeek, TechTarget and The Register.
