Salesforce acquires data management firm Own for $1.9B in cash

Salesforce has acquired Own Company, a New Jersey-based provider of data management and protection solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash (after subtracting the value of shares Salesforce already owns).

Own is Salesforce's biggest deal since buying Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021. The company reportedly considered -- but ultimately decided against -- purchasing data management software firm Informatica earlier this year.

In a press release, Salesforce GM Steve Fisher said the acquisition "underscores [Salesforce's] commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers' most valuable data."

"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," Fisher continued.

Own, launched in 2015 as OwnBackup (the company rebranded last October), provides a range of enterprise-focused data backup tools and services such as automated backup and disaster recovery.

The initial idea was to use software-as-a-service vendors' open APIs, including Salesforce's, to extract and back up data from a company's applications. Beyond Salesforce apps, Own supported SaaS apps 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's own Salesforce Ventures prior to today's buyout (per Crunchbase).

As of August 2021, Own was valued at $3.35 billion.

It's a high valuation -- but perhaps one justified by the massive size of the data backup and recovery segment. According to market analytics firm KBV Research, the global data backup and recovery sector was worth $12.9 billion in 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% from 2017 to last year.

The reasons for the growth are myriad.

Businesses face increasing threats related to ransomware. There's also the issue of data center disasters like the fire that hit France’s OVH in 2021, leading to significant data loss. In some countries, data management-related regulations like the EU AI Act are coming into force, many with strict data retention and provenance stipulations.

Today, Own has close to 7,000 customers and hundreds of employees. The company offers a portfolio of data archiving, seeding, security and analytics capabilities that have greatly expanded beyond the company's early product. Own CEO Sam Gutmann sees Own complementing Salesforce's existing data management tooling and "enabl[ing] Salesforce to offer a more comprehensive data protection and loss prevention set of products."

That'd be a natural evolution for Own. As my colleague Ron Miller previously wrote, the majority of the company's backup and recovery business involves the Salesforce ecosystem.

"We’re excited to join forces with Salesforce, a company that shares our commitment to data resilience and security," Gutmann said in a statement. “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."

Salesforce expects the transaction to close in Q4 of its fiscal year 2025, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Own could very well signal Salesforce's return to big acquisitions a year after the company said it would shift 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, snatching up startups PredictSpring (an omnichannel commerce platform) and Tenyx (which makes AI-powered voice agents).