Slack, the team communication app has been finally acquired by Salesforce. The step comes nearly eight months after Salesforce first announced plans to acquire the team communication platform. The acquisition comes at a whooping 27.7 Billion USD. Salesforce plans to integrate and offer Slack with Salesforce Customer 360. This is a customer data platform that allows companies to connect Salesforce apps and Map teams along with data sources across a whole organization.
Marc Benioff, CEO and Cofounder of Salesforce released a statement saying “Together we’ll define the future of enterprise software, creating the digital HQ that enables every organization to deliver customer and employee success from anywhere,”.
Team collaboration tools have seen increasing demand in the pandemic world with remote or work-from-home scenarios creating new opportunities for all players. Zoom and Microsoft Teams have already seized the moment since last year. However, this also meant that Slack faced aggressive competition from Microsoft Teams. This was evident in the tumbling share prices since they went public in 2019 with a valuation of 23 billion USD. This was followed by antitrust complaints against Microsoft while operating in the EU Markets. Slack's argument stands on a premise that Microsoft installs Teams as a part of their complete package and forces the customers into using it. The future of such complaints remains to be seen.
Controversies apart, Salesforce now has hands-on a very powerful collaboration tool feeding directly into its complete package. This not only creates more value for its product suite in the eyes of prospective customers but also enables deeper social integration. As before, Salesforce again has an opportunity to play a dominating and important role in the journey of digital transformation of businesses across the globe in the post-pandemic era.
Post-acquisition, Slack co-founder CEO Stewart Butterfield said “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink and reshape how and where we work, Salesforce and Slack are uniquely positioned to lead this historic shift to a digital-first world.” He will continue to work in the leadership role.
