Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Own Company for around $1.9 billion in cash. Own Company is a leading provider of data protection and data management. It already partners with Salesforce, having had a presence on the AppExchange since 2012. Salesforce already owned 10% of the firm from an investment by Salesforce Ventures, which participated in the $167.5 million Series D funding round in 2021.
Own currently has four solutions listed on the AppExchange:
- Own Recover: Protects data and metadata through independent backups and precision repair tools. Provides a backup solution to all Salesforce data using enterprise-grade security and a simple setup.
- Own Archive: Enables data archival and retrieval of historic data for compliance purposes ensuring core Salesforce systems remain productive.
- Own Secure for Shield: Accelerate and validate the implementation of Salesforce Shield Platform Encryption (encryption at rest) with Own Secure for Shield.
- Own Secure: Own Secure helps you reduce Salesforce risks, accelerate Shield encryption, and demonstrate compliance with confidence – all within Salesforce.
Steve Fisher, President and GM of Einstein 1 Platform and Unified Data Services commented, “Data security has never been more critical, and Own’s proven expertise and products will enhance our ability to offer robust data protection and management solutions to our customers. This proposed transaction underscores our commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers’ most valuable data and navigate the shifting landscape of data security and compliance.”
Salesforce expects the deal to be completed in Q4 of the Salesforce fiscal year 2025 (by March 2025), subject to the normal closing conditions. There is no expected change to Salesforce guidance for fiscal year 2025, but it expects the acquisition to have an accretive cash flow basis in fiscal 2026.
Why Own Company
Own Company has built a customer base of 7,000 clients. While it also has partnerships and solutions for ServiceNow, Microsoft, Veeva and nCino, it has built a deeper relationship with Salesforce over the last few years. Its solutions are hosted on AWS, with whom both Salesforce and Own have a partnership.
With the arrival of AI, data is even more precious to organisations than it ever has been. The growing risk of cybersecurity incidents, despite the secure nature of the Salesforce platform, is an ever-growing risk. It means that organisations need to protect their data more than ever. That includes a strong disaster recovery strategy that protects the data and enables a restoration in a worst-case scenario. Own provides extra layers of security, enhances the Salesforce security platform and offers a level of data back and recovery solution.
With this acquisition, Salesforce will accelerate the strength of its Platform Data Security, Privacy, and Compliance products. Those products include Salesforce offerings such as Salesforce Backup, Shield, and Data Mask.
Sam Gutmann, Own CEO, said, “We’re excited to join forces with Salesforce, a company that shares our commitment to data resilience and security. As digital transformation accelerates, our mission has expanded from preventing data loss in the cloud to helping customers protect their data, unlock business insights, and accelerate AI-driven innovation. Together with Salesforce, we’ll deliver even greater value for our customers by driving innovation, securing data, and ensuring compliance in the world’s most complex and highly regulated industries.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
The acquisition of Own Company by Salesforce makes its data and security platform stronger. Own solutions are already tightly integrated and should seamlessly merge into the Salesforce platform. What will be interesting is how that happens. The technology integration will get tighter when the Company becomes part of Salesforce. However, it isn’t clear whether it will remain a separate entity or be subsumed. That may depend upon those customers using solutions other than ServiceNow and Microsoft. If those numbers are large, it will probably remain separate.
Gutmann co-founded the Company in 2015 with Ariel Berkman, Chief Product Security Officer. The announcement did not indicate what role Gutmann or Berkman will hold at Salesforce. No doubt more information will be available at Dreamforce in a couple of weeks.
