Salesforce acquisition of Own to bolster data cloud platform, says BofA

After Salesforce announced its intent to acquire Own Company, which provides a suite of data security solutions spanning backup, recovery and intrusion prevention for $1.9B, BofA analyst Brad Sills noted that the data security vendor is an existing Salesforce App store partner, which should enable fairly rapid technology integration to complementary Salesforce offerings such as the Data Cloud. The firm views the proposed acquisition as a positive, arguing that the addition of Own’s intrusion prevention offering will accelerate development efforts in a category with growing importance to Salesforce’s AI offerings. Data security is a key requirement for enterprises when loading more data into Salesforce’s data warehouse, Data Cloud, notes the firm, which believes this acquisition could provide a catalyst for more data gravity to Data Cloud. BofA maintains a Buy rating and $325 price target on Salesforce shares.