“Think about it as the toolset to jumpstart their data cloud operations,” he told Fortune.
“Together, Salesforce and Informatica will create the most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry,” Benioff said in the press release.
“This acquisition is highly complementary in terms of having a data provider and then having more the company that manages this data,” he said.
Buying Informatica, Zino said, can also help Salesforce scale its AI offerings without a host of outside partnerships with other tech companies.
“You’ve got essentially the total solution there in your hand,” he said.
Ives, meanwhile, cited the benefits of Informatica’s strong customer base, which includes over 80% of the Fortune 100. Salesforce will now have an opportunity, he said, to sell “Agentforce” to these clients.
Not everyone on Wall Street is sold, however. Mortonson questioned why Benioff is spending billions on a company that has missed badly on earnings expectations over its last two quarters.
“They have not delivered as a standalone company,” he said of Informatica.
“Then, the activists got their hide out of [Salesforce], and they left,” Mortonson said. “Now, Benioff’s doing the exact same thing he did before the activists.”
Salesforce’s leader will have the opportunity to convince investors otherwise on the company’s earnings call after the bell Wednesday.
