# What happened to SteelBrick A renewal is often agreed in a room where everyone already accepts that SBQQ means the quoting org will be switched off. That agreement is the problem: the prefix fits a 2016 rename, a phase that applies to new customers, and a quarter the record does not give. **Published:** 2025-11-13 **Canonical:** https://synconai.com/what-happened-to-steelbrick **Author:** SynconAI Architecture Team ## In short Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016 and renamed it Salesforce CPQ. The metadata still uses the SBQQ prefix. CPQ is in an end-of-sale phase, and new customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. That phase is not a switch-off date for an org that already runs CPQ. The cited record prints no purchase price and no licence fee. ## Sources - **The ultimate guide to Salesforce product rebrands** (retrieved 2026-10-10) https://gearset.com/blog/salesforce-product-rebrands/ > Steelbrick, acquired in 2016, was renamed Salesforce CPQ, though the metadata still references its origins with SBQQ prefixes. Salesforce CPQ is now in an end-of-sale (EOS) phase as Salesforce offers new customers Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. ## What to take away - Treat SBQQ as Salesforce CPQ from the 2016 purchase, and keep Industries CPQ off that line. - Write end of sale as a phase for new customers, and strike any quarter that dates the end of an org already sending quotes. - Read the current CPQ fee from the contract, and do not treat end of sale as a published invoice or as a zero. - Refuse a switch-off of an existing CPQ org unless a notice names that org, or existing orgs, and names the day. ## The guide A renewal opens on a screen of API names, and the room has already agreed what SBQQ__Quote__c means. Someone calls the prefix legacy and writes a quarter when this org's quoting will be switched off. The sellers are still sending quotes from those objects this week. The agreement is easy: the letters look inherited, end of sale has been said aloud, so the org is on a clock. The agreement is the problem. It fits a 2016 rename, a commercial phase that applies to new customers, and a switch-off of quotes that are still going out. Only the first two are in the record. The quarter is not. The distinction that matters is who end of sale is about. Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016 and renamed it Salesforce CPQ. The metadata still uses the SBQQ prefix. The cited record says CPQ is in an end-of-sale phase, and new customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. End of sale is not a switch-off date for orgs that already run CPQ. Whether you keep sending the quotes you already send is a decision. It is not a consequence of the letters, and it is not a consequence of the phase by itself. ::: warn End of sale is not a switch-off date. Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016 and renamed it Salesforce CPQ. New customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. That offer does not date the end of an org that already runs CPQ. The cited record does not publish a purchase price or a licence fee. ::: What follows are the questions that separate a rename, and a phase for new customers, from an eviction of an org that already quotes. Each has a good answer and a bad answer. The difference is whether the answer names the prefix, the year, the products offered to new customers, or a notice that actually dates your org. A general answer is how end of sale becomes a false quarter. A DVD, a Reddit thread, a YouTube clip, a TikTok, a course, a book, or a certification is not a source for the date, the price, or a shutdown. ## The five, and what a bad answer signals | Question | Who has to answer it | What a bad answer usually means | | --- | --- | --- | | 1. Was SteelBrick bought, and what is the product called | Whoever is reading SBQQ__Quote__c, from the rebrand record | The prefix is treated as junk, or Industries CPQ is treated as the same product | | 2. Which date can you defend | Whoever is putting a quarter on the renewal | End of sale is written down as a day the record does not give | | 3. Who owns it, and who is the phase for | The person who can open a live quote, and whoever holds the CPQ contract | An offer to new customers is treated as a move of this org | | 4. What was paid | Procurement, from the cited record and from your own contract | End of sale is read as a published invoice, or as a zero | | 5. Is an existing CPQ org switched off | Whoever is being asked to date the end of the quotes | A retirement from another product is pinned to CPQ | ## 1. Was SteelBrick bought, and what is the product called? The question is not whether the prefix looks old. It is what the 2016 purchase became, and which objects you are actually in. Yes. Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016. The rebrand record says what happened next, and the sentences are quoted once: "Steelbrick, acquired in 2016, was renamed Salesforce CPQ, though the metadata still references its origins with SBQQ prefixes. Salesforce CPQ is now in an end-of-sale (EOS) phase as Salesforce offers new customers Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing." Read the two sentences separately. The first tells you the product was renamed Salesforce CPQ, and why the API still says SBQQ. The note spells the old company Steelbrick. Teams often write SteelBrick. Both point at the same purchase. The product you are in, if those objects are in production, is Salesforce CPQ. The second sentence is a commercial phase. Salesforce CPQ is in an end-of-sale phase as new customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. That sentence is about who can newly buy. It is not a sentence about the Tuesday your existing org stops calculating a quote. The acquisition, as the record can tell it, is the 2016 purchase, the rename, the surviving prefix, and the end-of-sale phase for new customers. It is not news of a switch-off. Industries CPQ is not this product. It comes from a different acquisition. Both names contain CPQ, which is how the mix-up starts. If your org has SBQQ, you are looking at Salesforce CPQ from SteelBrick. If someone points at an industry package and calls it the same thing, they have changed the owner of the work without changing the prefix. Keep the prefix visible. It tells you which product the 2016 deal became. **A good answer sounds like** the administrator opening SBQQ__Quote__c, saying Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016 and renamed it Salesforce CPQ, and refusing to call that object Industries CPQ. **A bad answer sounds like** the prefix is legacy, so delete the objects and treat every CPQ name as one product. Deleting the objects because the letters look inherited would remove the quoting system, not a leftover prototype. The letters are the trace of the old company. They are not a second owner, and they are not a shutdown notice. ## 2. Which date can you defend? 2016. That is the year in the quoted record. The metadata still uses the SBQQ prefix. The record does not add a month or a day. A timeline that inserts a season is more precise than the source, so it does not belong in the renewal. Searches for an acquisition date, an announcement, and a timeline get 2016, plus the fact that the prefix is still the old company sitting in the API. The prefix is not a clock. It does not expire because the letters look old. Do not treat end of sale as a second date you can write next to 2016. The record does not give end of sale a day. It describes a phase, and it says what new customers are offered during that phase. A quarter written beside the phase is a project plan, not a fact from the note. If a contract needs a completion day, use the contract. A completion day is not invented to make the timeline look finished. **A good answer sounds like** the renewal lead writing 2016 as the purchase year, writing end of sale as a phase with no day attached, and striking the quarter that was added because the phase sounded like a calendar. **A bad answer sounds like** acquired in 2016, end of sale next quarter, so both dates are in the note. Only the year is in the note. The phase is real. The quarter is a project plan wearing the phase as a costume. ## 3. Who owns it, and who is the phase for? Salesforce owns it. SteelBrick is not an independent quoting vendor on the facts in the record. The product name is Salesforce CPQ. The API prefix SBQQ is the trace of the old company, not a second owner. Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing are what the note says new customers are offered. They are not, on this record, a mandatory destination for an org that already runs CPQ. Offering a product to a new logo does not transfer your existing quotes into that product. Who may edit a price rule on a Monday is your administrator, not a person the record can name. Who owns the product is Salesforce. Those answers fit in one meeting only if you keep them apart. If you do not have the package, the note's commercial fact is the one that applies to you: new customers are offered the Revenue Cloud products it names. There is no reason to pretend you hold an org you cannot open. **A good answer sounds like** a seller who sent a quote this week from SBQQ objects, with procurement holding the CPQ contract, and with Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing named only as what the note offers to new customers. **A bad answer sounds like** Salesforce is offering Revenue Cloud, so our quotes have already moved and the prefix is someone else's problem. An offer to a new customer is not a transfer of your quotes. The owner of the product is Salesforce. The owner of a price rule on Monday is your administrator. The phase does not merge those two. ## 4. What was paid? The record cited here does not publish a purchase price or a licence fee. How much Salesforce paid, how much SteelBrick was sold for, and what you pay for CPQ now are different questions. The cited record is silent on the deal value. The silence stays empty. End of sale for new customers does not, by itself, publish your invoice, and it does not zero it. A licence you already pay is on your contract. It is not derived from a purchase price the record does not have. Why Salesforce acquired SteelBrick, and why the company sold, are not in the quoted sentences. The sentences give the year, the rename, the prefix, the end-of-sale phase, and the products offered to new customers. They do not give a motive. A motive added for the strategy slide cannot be checked against the note. Impact on customers splits in two, and the split is the whole of the impact worth claiming. New customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. Orgs that already run CPQ are not given a switch-off date. A business case that needs a deal figure has to cite a record that prints one. This one does not. **A good answer sounds like** procurement stating that the rebrand note is silent on the 2016 price, reading the current CPQ fee off the order form, and refusing to treat end of sale as either a new invoice or a credit to zero. **A bad answer sounds like** end of sale means we stop paying, or it means the old deal value is now our budget. The phase does not publish your invoice. The deal value is not in the note. Your contract is the licence. The acquisition price is a different silence. ## 5. Is an existing CPQ org switched off? End of sale is not a switch-off date. Say that in the plainest words available. The cited record puts Salesforce CPQ in an end-of-sale phase, and it says new customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. It does not date the end of an org that already runs CPQ. If a proposal prints a day when your CPQ org will be switched off, ask for the notice that names your org, or names existing orgs, and names the day. If the only sentence they can show is the one about new customers, the day comes off the page. The prefix is not a shutdown notice either. SBQQ on a quote object means you are in Salesforce CPQ. Whether you keep sending those quotes is a decision. It is not a consequence of 2016, and it is not a consequence of the words end of sale by themselves. Do not borrow a retirement date from a product that was actually switched off and attach it to CPQ. Those notices name their own products. This record names an end-of-sale phase. The phrases are not interchangeable. A claim that customers were forced off SteelBrick onto another quoting product is not in the record. The record says renamed, and it says what is offered to new customers. Forced, declined, and worth-it need your own quotes in the room. **A good answer sounds like** the person who owns the renewal showing a quote sent this week from SBQQ__Quote__c, and showing that the only commercial sentence on the table is the offer of Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing to new customers. **A bad answer sounds like** a different product was retired on a dated notice, so CPQ ends in that same quarter, and we will switch this org off because the keyword said sunset. Notices name their own products. End of sale is a phase. It is not that notice, and it is not a day. ## What to do with the answers Read the five as a set. Specific answers mean the renewal can tell a new customer from an org that already runs CPQ. General answers mean the room has agreed that old letters are an eviction, which the note does not say. Open a quote your seller sent recently. Look at the API name. If it starts with SBQQ, you are in the product the 2016 acquisition became. Write four lines. Bought in 2016. Renamed Salesforce CPQ. Prefix still SBQQ. End of sale is not a switch-off date for this org. Those lines do not choose a template to change, and they do not choose Revenue Cloud. Keep the old spelling in a glossary if you need it. The note says Steelbrick. Your rooms may say SteelBrick. The product name in the statement of work is Salesforce CPQ, and the API name still shows SBQQ. Do not let the glossary add a day the note does not contain. A board pack can carry those lines and no deal value. A price, a motive, and a switch-off quarter would turn a correct phase into a false eviction. A new quote design goes to Revenue Cloud. An existing CPQ org stays until you have a tested cutover. Do not switch it off because a keyword said sunset. How that choice is scoped is on [the SteelBrick implementation page](/steelbrick-salesforce-cpq). ## Questions ### Did Salesforce buy SteelBrick? Yes. Salesforce bought SteelBrick in 2016 and renamed it Salesforce CPQ. The note spells the old company Steelbrick. Teams often write SteelBrick. Both point at the same purchase, and the metadata still uses the SBQQ prefix. ### When did Salesforce acquire SteelBrick? 2016. The record does not add a month. End of sale is a phase, not a second date, and the note does not give that phase a day. ### Who owns SteelBrick? Salesforce. The product is Salesforce CPQ. Industries CPQ comes from a different acquisition. New customers are offered Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing, and that offer does not transfer quotes in an org that already runs CPQ. ### How much did Salesforce pay for SteelBrick? The cited record does not publish a purchase price or a licence fee. End of sale for new customers does not publish your invoice, and it does not zero it. The fee you pay is on your contract. ### Is SteelBrick shut down? End of sale is not a switch-off date for an org that already runs CPQ. If the only sentence on the table is the offer to new customers, a day written against your org comes off. Do not borrow a retirement from a product that was actually switched off. --- SynconAI is a Salesforce Select Partner and an OpenAI Select Partner, delivering architect-led Salesforce and AI programmes across the United States and Australia. Related service: Revenue Cloud (https://synconai.com/salesforce-revenue-cloud-advanced).