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TCS acquires Coastal Cloud for $700M all-cash - announced Dec 2025 Founded 2012 in Palm Coast, Florida by Sara & Tim Hale 8,000+ projects delivered for 1,700+ organizations Salesforce Customer Success Partner Innovation Award - 3 years running Eric Berridge named CEO at Dreamforce 2023 Named a Salesforce market leader by ISG for 5 straight years TCS acquires Coastal Cloud for $700M all-cash - announced Dec 2025 Founded 2012 in Palm Coast, Florida by Sara & Tim Hale 8,000+ projects delivered for 1,700+ organizations Salesforce Customer Success Partner Innovation Award - 3 years running Eric Berridge named CEO at Dreamforce 2023 Named a Salesforce market leader by ISG for 5 straight years
Company Profile  /  IT Services & Consulting

Coastal Cloud

A consultancy from a Florida beach town that helps organizations do more with Salesforce, data, and AI - and became one of TCS's largest-ever acquisitions.

Coastal Cloud's wordmark, photographed against the deep navy the firm favors in its own decks. From a Palm Coast garage-era start in 2012 to a $700 million exit in 2025 - the logo of a company that grew up quietly on the coast.

Coastal Cloud logo
Coastal Cloud · Est. 2012 · Palm Coast, FL
HQ Palm Coast, Florida
Founded 2012
CEO Eric Berridge
Team ~570
Revenue ~$141M
Owner TCS (2025)
What It Does

The firm that makes Salesforce actually pay off

Coastal Cloud sells a deceptively simple promise: buy Salesforce, and it will help you get your money's worth. That is harder than it sounds. Enterprise software is bought in a burst of optimism and then lived with for years, and the gap between the demo and the daily reality is where consultancies like Coastal make their living. Founded in 2012 in Palm Coast, Florida - a beach town better known for golf than for cloud computing - the firm has built its business inside the Salesforce ecosystem, layering in data platforms like Snowflake, analytics through Tableau, and integration via MuleSoft.

The work runs across the full arc of a platform's life: strategy and roadmapping up front, implementation and integration in the middle, and managed services once the system is live. Coastal describes its approach as automation-first, aimed at measurable business results with reduced risk. In practice that means the firm is hired to design a Salesforce environment, connect it to the rest of a company's systems, move and modernize the underlying data, and then keep the whole thing running and improving.

By its own count, Coastal has completed more than 8,000 projects for over 1,700 organizations, backed by thousands of Salesforce certifications across its team. Those certification numbers are not a vanity metric. In a partner ecosystem where Salesforce itself decides who gets ranked and referred, credentialed depth is the currency, and Coastal has spent years accumulating it.

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Projects Delivered
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Organizations Served
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TCS Deal Value
Who It Serves & The Problems It Solves

From a utility to a veterans' charity

Coastal works with mid-market and enterprise organizations, nonprofits, and public-sector agencies. The common thread is not an industry - it is a platform.

The client roster reads like a deliberate argument for range. Duke Energy and ADT sit alongside Columbia University, Hartford HealthCare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, RE/MAX, Valvoline, and the Wounded Warrior Project. What binds a utility, a university, an insurer, and a veterans' charity together is that each runs on Salesforce and each needs it to do something specific and hard.

The problems Coastal is hired to solve tend to fall into a few buckets: sales and service processes that do not match how the business actually works, customer data scattered across disconnected systems, marketing that cannot prove its impact, and platforms that were implemented years ago and have since drifted out of step with the organization. The firm cites outcomes like tens of millions in recovered revenue, service response times cut sharply, and marketing conversion rates that climbed - the kind of numbers that justify a consulting invoice.

Duke Energy Columbia University Hartford HealthCare Blue Cross Blue Shield ADT RE/MAX Valvoline Wounded Warrior Project
Products & Services

Seven ways in

Coastal's offerings map to the lifecycle of a platform - advise, build, connect, modernize, and maintain.

Since 2012

Strategy & Transformation

The "True North" advisory practice aligns Salesforce and data investments with business goals and roadmaps.

Since 2012

Implementation & Integration

Multi-cloud Salesforce builds across Sales, Service, Marketing, Revenue/CPQ, and Commerce, plus MuleSoft integration.

Since 2020

Data Modernization & AI

Data Cloud, Snowflake, and analytics engineering to modernize data foundations and enable AI.

Since 2024

AI & Agentic Solutions

Agentforce and AI-led advisory to build agentic customer experiences on the Salesforce platform.

Since 2015

Analytics & Insights

Tableau and CRM Analytics dashboards, reporting, and data visualization.

Since 2013

Managed Services

Ongoing administration, optimization, and support for deployed Salesforce environments.

How It's Different

Depth first, breadth second

The Salesforce consulting market is crowded and top-heavy. At the summit sit the global integrators - Accenture, Deloitte Digital, Cognizant - and the specialist mid-tier - Slalom, Silverline, Perficient, Traction on Demand. Coastal's answer to that competition was not to be bigger. It was to be deeply, verifiably credentialed and to prove it through Salesforce's own recognition programs.

That strategy shows in the trophies: the Salesforce Customer Success Partner Innovation Award three years running, a market-leader ranking from ISG for five consecutive years, and 5-star ratings on the AppExchange and G2 built on hundreds of reviews. Coastal also leaned into culture as a retention tool - repeatedly landing on Inc.'s Best Workplaces list, remote-first before it was common - because in a certification business, keeping your certified people is the product.

When Salesforce pivoted toward Data Cloud and Agentforce, Coastal did not have to reinvent itself. The data and AI muscle it had been building since 2020 was exactly what the new era demanded - which is a large part of why TCS was willing to pay $700 million for it.

Recognition scorecard

Self-reported / public awards
Salesforce Innovation Awards3 yrs
ISG Market Leader5 yrs
AppExchange reviews450+
G2 reviews180+
Years operating13
We exist to make you successful. - Coastal Cloud's stated mission
The People

Founders, and a familiar face at the helm

Co-Founder & President

Sara Stanley Hale

A former leader in Accenture's technology practice who set out to build a different kind of IT consulting firm. Named among Inc.'s Top 200 Female Founders.

Co-Founder

Tim Hale

More than 25 years of consulting experience, including 21 years as an Accenture partner. Co-built Coastal with his wife, Sara.

Chief Executive Officer

Eric Berridge

Co-founder and former CEO of Bluewolf (acquired by IBM) and a former Salesforce Chief Commercial Officer. Joined Coastal's board in 2021, took the CEO seat in 2023.

Timeline

From the coast to a $700M exit

2012

Founded in Palm Coast

Former Accenture leaders Sara and Tim Hale launch a Salesforce-focused consultancy on Florida's coast.

2015

Multi-cloud expertise expands

The firm broadens across Salesforce clouds and adds analytics capabilities.

2020

Sverica growth investment

Sverica Capital Management backs Coastal Cloud in June 2020 to accelerate growth.

2021

Eric Berridge joins the board

The Bluewolf co-founder is named to Coastal Cloud's Board of Managers.

2023

Berridge becomes CEO

The 23-year Salesforce veteran takes the CEO seat at Dreamforce 2023.

2024

AI and Agentforce focus

Coastal doubles down on Data Cloud, AI-led advisory, and agentic solutions.

2025

$700M acquisition by TCS

Tata Consultancy Services agrees to acquire Coastal Cloud in an all-cash deal announced in December.

Business Model & Market Fit

Where it sits in the stack

Coastal makes money the way consultancies do: project fees for implementation and integration, advisory engagements up front, and recurring managed-services contracts once systems are live. The recurring layer matters - it turns one-time build work into a longer relationship and smooths the lumpiness of project-based revenue. Reported figures put annual revenue around $141 million, with third-party estimates of roughly $83 million in recurring revenue.

In the market, Coastal occupies the specialist tier - large enough to take on enterprise transformations, focused enough to stay deep in Salesforce rather than spreading across every platform. That position is exactly what made it an acquisition target. For TCS, buying Coastal added hundreds of certified professionals and a book of Salesforce advisory work that would have taken years to build internally.

Ownership path

Founder-led to global integrator
2012 - Founder-owned
2020 - Sverica PE
2025 - TCS ($700M)
▶ Watch Coastal on Vimeo
Notes From The Margins

Five things worth knowing

Location

Not a tech hub

Headquartered in Palm Coast, Florida - a beach city better known for golf than cloud computing.

Founders

A married team

Run for years by husband-and-wife Sara and Tim Hale, both former Accenture leaders.

Culture

Remote-first, early

Distributed long before the pandemic made it standard across consulting.

FAQ

Questions people ask

What does Coastal Cloud do?

It is a consulting firm that helps organizations implement, integrate, and get value from Salesforce, along with data and AI platforms like Snowflake, Tableau, and MuleSoft. Services span strategy, implementation, analytics, and managed support.

Who founded Coastal Cloud and when?

It was founded in 2012 by Sara Stanley Hale and Tim Hale, both former Accenture leaders, and is headquartered in Palm Coast, Florida.

Who is the CEO of Coastal Cloud?

Eric Berridge, co-founder and former CEO of Bluewolf and a former Salesforce Chief Commercial Officer, was appointed CEO in September 2023.

Did TCS acquire Coastal Cloud?

Yes. Tata Consultancy Services announced a definitive agreement in December 2025 to acquire 100% of Coastal Cloud for $700 million in an all-cash deal, with completion expected in late January 2026.

What industries does Coastal Cloud serve?

Healthcare, financial services, education, nonprofit, manufacturing, high tech, private equity, and the public sector, among others.

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