Salesforce has acquired Own Company, a New Jersey-based provider of data management and protection solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash.
Own is Salesforce’s biggest deal since it bought Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021. The company reportedly considered (but ultimately decided against) buying data management software company Informatica earlier this year.
In a press release, Salesforce CEO Steve Fisher said the acquisition “underscores Salesforce’s commitment to providing end-to-end secure solutions that protect our customers’ most valuable data.”
“Data security has never been more critical, and Own’s experience and proven products will enhance our ability to deliver robust data protection and management solutions to our customers,” Fisher continued.
Own, launched in 2015 as OwnBackup (the company changed its name last October), offers a range of enterprise-focused data backup tools and services, including automated backup and disaster recovery.
The initial idea was to use open APIs from software-as-a-service providers, including Salesforce, to extract and back up data from a company’s applications. In addition to Salesforce applications, Own supported SaaS applications hosted on AWS and Microsoft.
Founded by Ariel Berkman, Daniel Gershuni and Eran Cohen, Own managed to raise $507.3 million from investors including Tiger Global, BlackRock, Insight Partners, Vertex Ventures and Salesforce Ventures prior to today’s purchase (according to Crunchbase).
As of August 2021, Own was valued at $3.35 billion.
This is a lofty valuation, but perhaps justified by the sheer size of the data backup and recovery segment. According to market research firm KBV Research, the global data backup and recovery industry was worth $12.9 billion by 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% from 2017 to last year.
The reasons for this growth are countless.
Businesses are facing increasing threats related to ransomware. There is also the issue of data center disasters, such as the fire that hit French company OVH in 2021, which led to significant data loss. In some countries, regulations related to data management are coming into force, such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, many with strict stipulations on data retention and provenance.
Today, Own has nearly 7,000 customers and hundreds of employees. The company offers a portfolio of data archiving, distribution, security, and analytics capabilities that have expanded significantly beyond the company’s early products. Own CEO Sam Gutmann believes Own will complement Salesforce’s existing data management tools and “allow Salesforce to offer a more comprehensive suite of data protection and loss prevention products.”
That would be a natural evolution for Own. As my colleague Ron Miller has written previously, the bulk of the company’s backup and recovery business involves the Salesforce ecosystem.
“We are excited to join forces with Salesforce, a company that shares our commitment to data resiliency and security,” Gutmann said in a statement. “Together with Salesforce, we will deliver even greater value to our customers by driving innovation, protecting data, and ensuring compliance in the world’s most complex and regulated industries.”
Salesforce expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2025, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
The fact that Salesforce has closed smaller acquisition deals could signal Salesforce’s return to big acquisitions a year after the company said it would back away from M&A under pressure from activist investors (it went so far as to disband its M&A committee). In recent weeks, Salesforce has closed smaller acquisition deals, acquiring startups PredictSpring (an omnichannel commerce platform) and Tenyx (which makes AI-powered voice agents).
