The Strategic Rationale

Salesforce emphasised that by acquiring Informatica, it aims to build the “most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry.”

Informatica brings strong capabilities in metadata management, data integration, data quality, governance, and master data management (MDM) — all critical for AI and active metadata architectures.

For Informatica customers, the implied benefit is deeper cloud integration, stronger data-foundation services, and access to Salesforce’s distribution and ecosystem.

What Could Go Wrong? Risks for Informatica Customers

1. Delayed or Incomplete Integration

If Salesforce takes a conservative integration path, Informatica’s product roadmap might slow or shift. This could mean fewer updates, stalled innovation, or forced migrations into Salesforce-branded services — all of which create operational risk for customers relying today on Informatica’s standalone capabilities.

2. Diminished Focus on Metadata/Lineage

Informatica’s customers value its metadata, lineage, governance and data-quality stack. If Salesforce prioritises CRM, customer-360, or AI-agent deliverables over metadata operationalisation, the metadata-governance function could become a second-tier concern. That would erode value for organisations whose compliance, lineage tracing and audit readiness depend on Informatica’s existing strength.

3. Platform Consolidation and Forced Migration

Acquisitions often lead to roadmap rationalisation. Customers may be asked (or find themselves compelled) to migrate from existing Informatica modules to Salesforce native tooling or future unified platforms. Such migrations carry cost, risk of feature loss, data-migration complexity, and vendor lock-in uncertainty.

4. Contract and Support Disruption

During M&A transitions, support levels, licensing models, renewal incentives and partner ecosystems can change. Informatica customers may face support gaps, pricing shifts, or partner-ecosystem realignment — at a time when metadata governance operations cannot be interrupted.

5. Competitive Positioning & Vendor Lock-in

If Salesforce tightly reins in Informatica product direction and couples it deeply with Salesforce’s cloud stack, customers using heterogenous cloud/big-data ecosystems (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, Oracle, Azure, multi-cloud) might find fewer neutral, best-of-breed options. This could restrict flexibility and increase total cost of ownership.

What Informatica Customers Should Do Now

• Review your contract: Understand any change-of-control clauses, product-migration commitments, licensing change triggers or roadmap guarantees.

• Map out your metadata/lineage dependency: Document which capabilities you rely on today (catalog, lineage, quality, MDM) and assess the risk if these evolve or degrade.

• Define a continuity plan: Identify backup options, including alternative metadata/lineage providers, or internal strategies to hedge vendor risk.

• Engage directly with Salesforce/Informatica about roadmap: Ask for specific commitments about development velocity, multi-cloud support, product autonomy, partner ecosystem and governance capability.

• Monitor migration pressures: Stay alert to any roadmap announcements that deprecate current modules, force migration paths or shift tools into Salesforce-only stacks.

• Assess multi-cloud and hybrid support: Make sure your architecture remains flexible. Don’t let a CRM-centric acquisition compromise your broader data-platform strategy.

Final Thoughts

The Salesforce-Informatica acquisition presents a promising vision: unified data, metadata, governance and AI-agent infrastructure. For many Informatica customers, that could mean accelerated capabilities and integration momentum. But the transition also carries significant risk.

If metadata, lineage, and governance capabilities become secondary to CRM or agent-AI priorities — or if migrations are forced without feature parity — customers could face operational disruption, increased cost and reduced vendor flexibility. In this dynamic era of metadata, AI and governance, enterprise customers must act with foresight. Understand what you depend on today. Secure your future-state options. And partner with platforms that keep metadata, lineage and governance front and centre — not afterthoughts.