FeatureUC&C2 Dec 2020 · 3 min read

Salesforce Acquires Slack - Will They Take on UCaaS?

Salesforce’s $27.7bn Slack deal could sharpen its challenge to Microsoft Teams and UCaaS. Published on UC Today, here’s why buyers should care.

Ian Taylor

Salesforce acquires Slack UCaaS implications

Global leader in CRM (customer relationship management) software, Salesforce, will acquire Slack Technologies, Inc., Microsoft Teams' most relevant rival in the collaboration space. As per the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 in shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, totaling $27.7 billion.

I reached out to Irwin Lazar, VP and Service Director, Nemertes Research, who told UC Today he sees the deal playing out in a few ways. He also said that the move will likely speed up Slack's momentum.

"Though Slack has a loyal user-base, they have faced increasing headwinds in the enterprise market against Microsoft Teams, namely as Teams has improved over the past year"

[caption id="attachment_25489" align="alignright" width="200"] Irwin Lazar, UC Today[/caption]

Lazar said that Slack now has the proper resources to build out its team collaboration platform and to integrate Salesforce with other apps. On social media, the move has largely been touted as a good one, and Lazar echoes this sentiment, calling the move a 'huge win' for the Salesforce customer base. "They now have access to a best-in-class collaboration, integration, and workflow management platform with tight integration to Salesforce."

Looking toward the future of the duo, Lazar said that Salesforce could decide to more aggressively go after Microsoft Teams, something he said we will watch play out in 2021. He believes that the big challenge for Slack will be reassuring its customer base that it will remain a stand-alone platform. The developer community, which he holds is perhaps Slack's biggest user-base, will take the most convincing. "Companies like Mattermost and Rocket.chat might try to capitalize on the move and displace Slack in those communities as a result."

Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce, said in a statement: “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.”

Slack's CEO and Co-Founder, Stewart Butterfield, noted:

"The opportunity we see together is massive, especially as software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization"

I also reached out to Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research, to get his take on things. He said there may be UCaaS implications stemming from the deal. He believes that most UCaaS vendors are unlikely to be impacted by the move, noting that the acquisition does not hold the same undertones for Microsoft. "This is a shot across the bow for Microsoft, and it finally gives Salesforce an application they can use to take Microsoft on directly."

Echoing Butterfield's previous claims that Microsoft padded its numbers because it included its Microsoft Teams collaboration app with Microsoft 365 user subscriptions, he said: "Slack is a good product, far better than Teams, but Microsoft never let Slack catch up to it because it offers a good enough product while bundling the offering into its Microsoft 365 licenses." This, Butterfield has long maintained, gives the company an unfair advantage. I asked Kerravala what the most ideal outcome for the pair would be in his eyes, to which he responded: