Salesforce.com Inc has completed the acquisition of Slack, a 27.7 billion dollar deal. That adds the messaging app to its suite of enterprise software without changing Slack’s functionality, branding, or leadership.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce said that together they can define the future of enterprise software, creating the digital HQ that enables every organization to deliver customer and employee success from anywhere. Butterfield, CEO and Co-founder of slack said that in a different universe where business communication platform is successful over the next two years and 98% of knowledge workers use the communication platform. It does matter to Microsoft because the relative importance of email is hugely diminished.
Slack is going from an upstart independent challenger to a consolidated competitor on even footing. As Box CEO Aaron Levie said to Casey Newton after the deal was announced that the advantage Microsoft has is distribution, and so they’ve neutralized the advantage. They can attain the promise of the opportunity because they have 10 times the amount of salespeople that can distribute this thing into corporations around the world.
Salesforce.com Inc has referred to its employees as architects of a remote-friendly approach, and with Slack in its pocket, it will try to dominate as other companies move in that direction. Butterfield and Salesforce COO Bret Taylor are planning an event to share more about how the two companies are creating a powerful platform for the digital-first, work anywhere world.The business communication platform struggled to fully seize the moment due in part, at least to aggressive competition from Microsoft Teams. Since going public with an opening day valuation of $23 billion in 2019, Slack’s shares had gone into free fall.
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