The only advantage that Microsoft had before was its power in distribution, which Slack has now acquired through its integration into Salesforce, the world’s biggest customer relationship management (CRM) company. As Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush put it, “this deal will be a major shot across the bow at Microsoft”. The two companies have been pushing their own tools heavily during the pandemic, and Salesforce wants a share of the pie. The company’s acquisition of Slack has given it an edge to fight its rivals Microsoft and Google, the latter of which is interested in growing its cloud computing division alongside its business collaboration tools. “The events of this year have greatly accelerated the move by companies and governments to an all-digital world, where work happens wherever people are,” Salesforce said in its announcement of the deal. Slack has failed to fully capitalize on the moment that the workplace applications had during the pandemic, and could not fend off its aggressive competitor, who became a household name during this process. The number was bolstered by the way Microsoft integrated Teams with its other Office products. Whereas Microsoft had garnered 115 million daily active users by that time. Back then Slack had 4 million daily active users, and the number rose to only 12 million in 4 years. The letter read that “Slack is here to stay”, and warned Microsoft against the competition they were putting themselves into. Slack stopped being the underdog darling of Silicon Valley when it penned an open letter to Microsoft, after it rolled out its Teams app, in 2016. Salesforce had its own social platform called Chatter, which was shut down in 2018 due to low consumer attraction.
The two companies had product integrations over the years, making it easier for enterprises to share data between the two platforms. After the news of the sale, they hit 44 dollars. Before the news, stocks varied between 25 to 32 dollars.
#SLACK ACQUISITION FREE#
Trading was opened at 38 dollars per share, and went into free fall afterwards. Before Salesforce had acquired Slack, the company had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange last June. The sale is expected to close in mid-2021. In summary, Slack will become Salesforce’s new interface for its remote-working tools. The app will be integrated into Salesforce Customer 360 Software, which collects a company’s customer information in one place. The company will still keep its name and operations, and CEO Stewart Butterfield will continue to lead Slack as an operating unit within Salesforce. The integration of Slack into Salesforce does not mean a total sell-out on Slack’s side. Hence, the rivalry between the two companies has become evident. However, Slack was the first company to successfully materialise such an idea, and saw many of its core elements later implemented by Microsoft Teams. What Slack is, is nothing out of the ordinary for SCL Student Bytes readers, as all of us have become all too familiar with such tools due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was designed to work with other workplace tools such as GoogleDocs and Trello, making it a desirable app for those looking to expand their options in such tools. Users also have the ability to make public or private chat groups for teams and departments, as well as message other users individually. Eventually, the company grew into an alternative to e-mail, with an emphasis on instant messaging between users.
This caused the company to shut down its gaming operations and focus on its chatting functions. Its online game, Glitch, however, was a failure. Slack was initially founded in 2009 as an online gaming company called Tiny Speck. Salesforce entering into the picture, however, means that big tech will reign over the industry, acquiring independent businesses left and right and potentially defying competition laws. With the recent lockdown procedures implemented all around the globe due to the pandemic, and many businesses going remote, the competition between Slack and Teams has intensified. The deal comes as a big competitive move against Microsoft, whose Teams has been Slack’s biggest rival. The enterprise behemoth declared that it will buy the company in cash and stock for almost 28 billion dollars (27.7 dollars to be exact). Salesforce’s announcement of its acquisition of Slack this past month, its largest acquisition in its 21 year history, has become a hot-topic for the remote-work industry.
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