The Salesforce Acquisition Playbook: We Have Seen This Before, and Here Is What Happens Next
- Marco Meisert
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
By Marco Meisert, Founder & MD, Synergy Flow Consult
We Have Seen This Before
Five months since Salesforce completed its acquisition of Informatica in November 2025, patterns are starting to emerge. At Synergy Flow Consult, we have been watching this closely, because we have seen a version of this story before.
In 2018, Salesforce acquired MuleSoft for USD 6.5 billion. At the time, MuleSoft was one of the most respected integration platforms on the market, with broad adoption well beyond the Salesforce ecosystem. What followed was gradual but meaningful:
Growth slowed from 8-9% annually to approximately 3-4% by early 2026
After nearly a decade as a Gartner iPaaS Leader, MuleSoft was repositioned as a Challenger in 2025
For organisations already Salesforce-centric, the integration deepened and created genuine value
For those running SAP, Oracle or multi-cloud data estates, the platform increasingly felt optimised for someone else's priorities
The Same Strategic Logic
The Informatica acquisition follows the same pattern. Salesforce's stated goal is to build an agent-ready data platform, combining Informatica's data catalogue, governance, MDM and metadata management with Agentforce, Data Cloud, MuleSoft and Tableau.
That is a coherent strategy if you are Salesforce. The problem is that Informatica's value to its existing customers was built on something different: multi-cloud neutrality. Informatica positioned itself as the "Switzerland of data," with deep partnerships across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake and Databricks. That neutrality is now under genuine pressure.
What Has Already Happened
These are not catastrophic signals individually. Taken together, they are early indicators of a pattern in motion:
Informatica's PowerCenter 10.5.x standard support ended in March 2026, meaning customers on that version must now pay for extended support or accelerate a migration they may not have planned for
Gartner flagged an extended period of product rationalisation and significant product overlaps immediately after the deal was announced
Informatica's own co-founder publicly called the acquisition a bad idea and warned of a rocky road for customers, citing meaningful overlap between the two platforms across data integration
What to Plan For
Based on what we observed post-MuleSoft, several things are worth planning for, even if none are confirmed outcomes yet:
Pricing at renewal is likely to shift, with enterprise licence agreements bundled into Salesforce's broader commercial model
Account management is likely to restructure as Informatica's teams absorb into Salesforce's go-to-market motion
R&D priority is expected to redirect toward MDM for Agentforce rather than general-purpose data integration
Following the pattern observed with MuleSoft's non-Salesforce connectivity after 2018, multi-cloud support for platforms like Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery may face similar pressure over time
These are patterns, not guarantees. But they are worth acting on before your next renewal, not after.
Who Should Be Concerned
The nuance here matters. If your organisation is Salesforce-heavy and your data architecture is built around that ecosystem, the combined platform may genuinely benefit you. The integration of Informatica's cataloguing and governance capabilities with Agentforce and Data Cloud is a compelling proposition in that context.
The concern is more relevant for:
Organisations running SAP or Oracle-first architectures
Multi-cloud data estates where neutrality is not optional
Teams relying on Informatica's integrations with Snowflake, Databricks or BigQuery
Customers on PowerCenter facing a migration decision they had not planned for
Those organisations should be having this conversation now.
Our Position
Synergy Flow Consult's position has always been platform-agnostic. Unlike many integrators in the market, we do not resell vendor licenses or hold financial incentives tied to any platform, which means our recommendations are not influenced by margin or partnership tiers. We maintain strong working relationships with the major vendors, but our only commercial interest is in helping clients make the right decision for their situation.
For organisations reassessing their options, the first step is understanding which parts of the Informatica stack you are actually dependent on, because no single platform replaces it wholesale. The right path depends entirely on your architecture, your data domains and what you need to preserve. That is exactly the kind of conversation we are set up to have.
Start the Conversation
If you are an Informatica customer working through what this acquisition means for your roadmap, or have a data integration decision coming up in the next 12 to 18 months, reach out directly via marco@synergyflowconsult.com or connect with us via Linkedin.
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