Rebranded data backup and recovery company launches first global partner programme to power next stage of growt
Own Company, the new name for OwnBackUp, is a renowned data backup and recovery provider that automatically backs up and secures customers’ SaaS data in AWS.
Founded in 2015, its roots lie in managing, backing up and securing data from the Salesforce ecosystem. This environment still accounts for more than 90% of the company’s $200 million-plus in annual recurring revenue (ARR), but Own Company also provides solutions and services for SaaS applications in other ecosystems, notably Microsoft Dynamics 365 and ServiceNow.
Own Company’s product portfolio covers five main areas – Backup & Recovery, Data Security, Data Seeding, Data Archiving and, most recently, Data Discovery. The last, following October’s launch of Own Discover, enables customers to access historical SaaS data to identify trends and insights, train AI large language models (LLMs) and export data to other systems.
For now, Backup & Recovery remains Own Company’s flagship offering and the starting point for the vast majority of its nearly 7,000 customers – although not all of them, as John Henry Archer, Senior Director, Partner Channels at Own Company, points out.
“Our backup and recovery product, called Recover, is our bread and butter. But we have instances where we start with our Archiving product, because somebody has a challenge with their SaaS application. They might be spending too much
money on storage or have a compliance requirement to keep that data for a long period of time. They’ll start there and then over time they might buy our backup and recovery product or look at our secure product for posture management as well.”
Because of its origins, some of Own Company’s expanded capabilities across Data Security, Data Seeding and Data Archiving are still only available for the Salesforce ecosystem. However, Archer says the intention is to extend these to other applications as well.
“From a roadmap perspective, our Salesforce ecosystem is the most robust because we’ve been doing that for many years now. But the goal is to have a
very similar offering of modules in every ecosystem.”
Archer points out that the ability to address multiple SaaS ecosystems with an expanded product offering is moving the company towards its goal of becoming a leading provider of data protection services for all mission-critical SaaS applications, enabling customers to take ownership of and make the most of their data. Hence the new company motto – ‘It’s their platform. It’s your data. Own it’.
Technology partnerships
As part of this strategy, Own Company is also extending its reach through partnerships with technology vendors and ISVs like Veeva CRM; nCino cloud-based banking software; Copado, which is integrating Own Company Backup & Recovery with its DevOps platform; and, since last March, data management and security company Cohesity.
The latter is significant because it enables Own Company and Cohesity to combine their strengths and offer joint customers consolidated data protection for on-premises systems and SaaS workloads, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and ServiceNow, with a choice of back-up environments (on-premises or fully managed cloud) and the ability to view and manage on-premises and SaaS backup data side-by-side.
“There’s a tonne of traditional on-prem providers of data protection services and they do a great job,” says Archer. “But data protection is very different in the SaaS world, and SaaS applications are our specialty and our value prop there is very unique. We provide benefits to customers in areas where a lot of the on-prem providers don’t have an offering today or one’s that only very limited.”
He adds: “We talk to our customers all the time and we have customer advisory boards giving us guidance on what SaaS ecosystem partners to work with next. We have a pretty nice pipeline of different partners that we’re going to be working with over the next few years.”
Channel push
In addition to its vendor partnerships, Own Company is developing stronger ties with resellers and system integrators, including ecosystem specialists and regional and global partners that have expertise across all environments.
Archer points out that while Own Company has worked with partners for many years alongside its direct business model, the channel is becoming more important as the company shifts its focus from direct sales to a partner-first model.
Hence the launch of its first global partner programme, which he says has been designed to reward partners that invest in their relationship with Own Company.
“On the channel side of things, we’re not going to sign up lots and lots of partners. Our goal is to have fewer partners but very, very strategic partners that we do very tight go-to-market motions with and together grow mutually beneficial business.”
In this context, he adds that a key requirement for partners is to help educate the market on the need for better SaaS data protection.
“Many of our resellers are helping organisations with their global data protection strategy, across different data types. What we’re finding is that while a lot of clients think about data protection and security for traditional on-premises applications, as well as some of the public cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure, there is still a need for organisations to understand the necessity of a data protection strategy for SaaS applications as well.
“There’s a misconception that because a SaaS application is in the cloud its data is backed up, but customers are responsible for their own data. If somebody accidentally deletes data, it’s not on the SaaS provider to recover that data. Our resellers are educating our prospects and customers on this need and teaching them how to get the most out of our platform and the data that we back up.”
He adds that Own Company’s expanding platform and product portfolio also brings great opportunities for partners to generate additional revenue from services.
“We are in the midst of building out blueprints for partner-led services that we’ve typically done in-house. For example, there’s a tremendous amount of services associated with the remediation of data exposure risks identified by our Data Security product,” he explains.
Also on Own Company’s future roadmap are managed services for MSPs
Tiered programme
To nurture and strengthen new and existing relationships, Own Company has adopted a tiered model for its partner programme – registered, silver and gold – with specific benefits, rewards and incentives at each level and a focus on rewarding partners throughout the sales cycle rather than just for closed business.
Features include:
- incentives and financial rewards, such as partner discounting and rebate programmes;
- sales and technical training and certifications;
- partner support such as deal registration, technical support and customer service resources; and
- sales and marketing support, including partner-guided POCs, partner- led service opportunities and access to market development funds (MDF) and marketing campaigns.
“From a partner perspective, we’re going to be rolling out a lot of really great things this year,” says Archer. “We’re going to do a lot more training and enablement; we’re going to have monthly webinars; we’re going to have very focused certifications for each ecosystem, which
we’ll be working on throughout the year and launching for our gold tier and silver tier partners to make sure there are Own Company experts at each of the partners we invest in and which invest with us; and we’re going to continue to invest with partners from a go-to-market perspective with MDF funds. This summer, we’re also going to be hosting our inaugural Executive Partner Summit for the top partners that we work with.”
Top partners will also sit on a Partner Advisory Council to give feedback on the programme and suggest how it can be improved. “This is our 1.0 version and we’re going to continue to make it better and better over time,” says Archer.
“I really believe we have the opportunity to build a tonne of momentum in the market with our channel partners. We strongly believe that this is going to be the year of the partner for us and that the launch of our partner programme and having that partner-first motion are going to take us to the next level.”
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