Discord seized on the idea, broadening its scope from gamers to an all-in-one communication tool. If you wanted to fault Slack for one thing, it would be for failing to notice and double down on the fact that all the things users wanted at the office - a way to share information quickly, a way to keep in touch, a way to feel more connected - were the same things they now needed in the rest of their lives. ![]() The Salesforce acquisition seems likely to lead to Slack doubling down on being a work tool. Meanwhile, Google renamed its productivity suite to Workspace, in case it wasn't obvious what it was trying to do. Zoom has used its newfound hugeness to try and become the center of users' workflow Dropbox has completely redesigned its product to do the same Monday and Asana and many others are hoping to be the next big platforms for people to share and store and do work. Office 365 is also the giant in the online-workplace space. It just happened that chat windows were a really good place to start.īut here, too, Slack finds itself in unflattering company. What Slack actually set out to do was help connect all the other tools people use, to become the hub of a workplace that felt increasingly siloed in dozens of different apps. To listen to Stewart Butterfield, he never really wanted to kill email. ![]() In a way, selling to Salesforce also gives Slack a better chance to achieve its original vision. The company clearly sees an opportunity in the pandemic: Benioff said earlier this year that "My personal belief is always that in a moment of crisis, you need to invest through it." He said he saw 2020 as a moment of huge transition in how companies operate and do business, and that he believed "No one is better positioned than Salesforce to accelerate out of this crisis and bring customers into the new normal." Slack helps bring all the company's disparate pieces together. Most of its big-number acquisitions in recent years - from $6.5 billion on MuleSoft to $15.7 billion on Tableau to $750 million on Quip - have been on new software and tools outside of its core CRM business. I'm thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes."īuying Slack pushes Salesforce even closer to becoming an all-in-one suite of work tools, not unlike Office 365. "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. "This is a match made in heaven," Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. Already, the combined companies are touting Slack as "the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360" and something like the new front door for all things Salesforce. The rumors were true: Salesforce announced it is acquiring Slack for $27.7 billion, in a combination of cash and Salesforce stock. Until last week, that is, when Slack stock suddenly jumped more than 20% on rumors that Salesforce was looking to buy the company. Zoom's share price has risen more than $400 this year, while Slack was up about $7. Put together, Slack went from one of the hottest companies in the next generation of work tools to something more like MySpace or Friendster, a company clearly on the right track but unable to win the market. When Slack filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft, it begged for a level playing field: "We're confident that we win on the merits of our product, but we can't ignore illegal behavior that deprives customers of access to the tools and solutions they want," Slack VP of communications and policy Jonathan Prince said. This, of course, is not a fair fight: Teams is part of the Office 365 bundle, and while it's always hard to beat free, it's particularly hard to do so in a time of huge economic uncertainty. The other product constantly mentioned in the same breath as Slack was Microsoft Teams, which more than tripled its user base in 2020 to 115 million daily active users. Much of Zoom's rise, of course, came from outside its traditional business: Schools, hospitals, happy hours and knitting classes all went virtual, and all went to Zoom. ![]() Throughout the pandemic and the remote-work revolution it created, Slack has been constantly compared to Zoom, which rode unprecedented growth to near-mainstream adoption. Comparisons have never been kind to Slack.
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