CEO: OwnBackup funding will power more SaaS platform support
The latest OwnBackup funding round is the SaaS backup vendor's largest. While Salesforce backup remains important, other top SaaS platforms are on the roadmap.
OwnBackup is seeking to expand in the hot market of SaaS backup following a $50 million funding round.
For several years, OwnBackup has focused on Salesforce backup and recovery, but the vendor is now eyeing other SaaS platforms to support, CEO Sam Gutmann said.
Over the next two to three years, OwnBackup is targeting a "top 10" in the SaaS ecosystem, Gutmann said. He declined to provide specifics, but other popular SaaS platforms include Microsoft 365, G Suite, Dropbox, Box and NetSuite.
OwnBackup has received $73.25 million in funding in little over a year, following a $23.25 million round in 2019. The new round brings total OwnBackup funding to $100 million.
Still, Gutmann is aiming to be cautious with the expansion.
"Most startups fail because they failed to focus," Gutmann said, echoing comments he made after the 2019 funding round. The difference now is OwnBackup plans to protect other SaaS apps, while last year it continued to concentrate on Salesforce.
Aided by the funding, OwnBackup plans to more than double the size of its research and development team. The vendor, with headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., is approaching 250 total employees, up from about 100 one year ago and 30 three years ago. Gutmann aims to be closer to 300 by the end of year.
Battle of SaaS backup underway
Christophe Bertrand, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said he expects more investments in the SaaS backup and recovery market.
"I think we're starting to see the arms race now," Bertrand said. "Who's going to win the enterprise?"
Like other top SaaS platforms such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce is responsible for the overall infrastructure but the end users are responsible for their data. It's hard to get solid Salesforce backup and recovery, Bertrand said.
Demands for availability are high, though. A recent Enterprise Strategy Group survey of IT professionals responsible for data protection technology decisions showed an average 30-minute recovery point objective for Salesforce and a 27-minute RPO for Microsoft 365.
While there are several products that back up Microsoft 365 data, the Salesforce backup market is limited, at least for now. Odaseva also focuses on Salesforce data protection.
The OwnBackup funding validates the power of Salesforce and shows that it's the next battleground for data protection, Bertrand said. Salesforce itself recommends third-party backup and recovery, and is retiring its Salesforce Data Recovery, a last-resort service for customers looking to restore lost data, at the end of July.
Sam Gutmann
"That news kind of woke people up -- 'I need to be responsible for my data,'" Gutmann said of the end of Salesforce Data Recovery.
OwnBackup's cloud-to-cloud business continuity platform provides backup of data, metadata and attachments stored in Salesforce. It features real-time monitoring and alerts. The vendor also provides backup and recovery for nCino, Veeva and Sage platforms.
Recent OwnBackup updates include enhanced sandbox seeding and its Archiver product, which launched last year and enables users to directly archive data from Salesforce.
With the OwnBackup funding, the vendor plans to expand its backup, recovery, archiving and sandbox seeding services into a unified platform across a variety of SaaS applications.
Tackling challenges on the road ahead
Insight Partners led the OwnBackup funding round, which also featured participation from Salesforce Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. Private equity firm Insight Partners owns Veeam Software and has a stake in several other data protection vendors. While it's not connected to any Salesforce-only backup vendors, it does have other SaaS backup in its portfolio, such as Veeam's Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and Spanning's Backup for Salesforce.
We've had many customers tell us business continuity planning is more important than it's ever been.
Sam GutmannCEO, OwnBackup
The biggest hurdle for OwnBackup is customers not being aware of the need for backup and "doing nothing," Gutmann said.
Though the pandemic is presenting a challenge to IT budgets, data protection is one area that remains top of mind.
"We've had many customers tell us business continuity planning is more important than it's ever been," Gutmann said. "And we're part of that strategy."
OwnBackup doubled its customer base to 2,000 in the last year. With increased platform support, the plan is to double customers again in the year to come, but Gutmann acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic may make that goal more difficult.
"It's still a huge opportunity to grow the business organically and add platforms on top of that," Gutmann said.
Sam Gutmann
