Having adopted Own Company's technology, Salesforce has decided to buy the SaaS data protection and data management outfit for $1.9 billion in cash.

By coughing up significantly less than the nominal $3.35 billion valuation calculated in a 2021 VC funding round, the CRM giant has ended its self-imposed abstinence from major acquisitions after it gulped down office collaboration platform Slack for $27 billion in 2021.

"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," said Steve Fisher, Salesforce president for the Einstein 1 Platform and Unified Data Services.

Salesforce has become familiar with Own Company's technology in recent times. In August, the two companies struck up a deal to back up data for the SaaS application vendor's customers. Own's turnkey Continuous Data Protection (CDP) uses Salesforce Change Data Capture events to continuously capture all changes to production data as they happen. It provides a full historical record of how data changes over time, the companies said.

The newly acquired company changed its name from OwnBackup last year. It was founded in 2012 and initially backed up customer data for the Salesforce SaaS app, later expanding to include Sage Business Cloud Financials, Veeva (life sciences), nCino (financial data), Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Power platform, and ServiceNow. The majority of its revenue comes from Salesforce customers.

The decision to take on another acquisition comes 18 months after activist investor Elliott Management took a multibillion-dollar stake in Salesforce, seemingly disappointed in growth, margins, and a failure to drive value from a string of expensive mergers.

As well as Slack, other mergers included Tableau, the data visualization and analytics system acquired for $15.7 billion in 2019, and the API farmer MuleSoft, which Salesforce bought for $6.5 billion in 2018.

In January 2021, Salesforce said it would cut about 7,000 jobs "to reduce operating costs, improve operating margins, and continue advancing the Company's ongoing commitment to profitable growth."

In September that year, CEO Marc Benioff said Salesforce hired 3,300 new staff as it focused on growth and margins. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/06/salesforce_own_company/