Tag: Slack

Salesforce Plus Slack Equals a Battle Over the Cloud

Salesforce announced its much-anticipated acquisition of Slack earlier today, sparking nothing short of a battle over the cloud.

Salesforce made headlines last week when news broke that it was looking to acquire Slack. Talks progressed rapidly, with the deal announced a few hours ago. In the statement announcing the deal, Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s CEO and Co-Founder, provided a clue about what’s at stake:

Salesforce started the cloud revolution, and two decades later, we are still tapping into all the possibilities it offers to transform the way we work. The opportunity we see together is massive.

Despite being responsible for starting the cloud revolution, Salesforce has come under increasing pressure from other companies, most notably Microsoft. The Redmond company has made no bones about its intention to unseat Salesforce as the dominant CRM company. Most recently, Microsoft partnered with C3.ai and Adobe to roll out an AI-based CRM.

Similarly, Slack has been under increased pressure from Microsoft Teams. Teams doubled Slacks installed user base in November 2019 when it reached 20 million daily users. Its user base has exploded since then, reaching 115 million in October. Much of Teams’ growth has been the result of Microsoft’s bundling it with Office, a practice that prompted Slack to file an antitrust complaint with the EU.

Butterfield’s comment about “the opportunity we see together is massive” is indicative of just how much both companies need this merger. Since its IPO, Slack has never turned a profit. To make matters worse, Slack has not experienced the same pandemic-fueled boon like Zoom and other cloud platforms. It’s experienced significant growth to be sure, but not to the same degree as competing companies.

The combination of the two companies will help both fight Microsoft.

“The core reason for this deal in our opinion is to keep pace with the cloud behemoth in Redmond,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors Tuesday, reports CNN. “Slack despite facing stiff competition from Microsoft has been a clearly successful solution set further penetrating enterprises and thus looks like the natural fit for Salesforce to beef up its collaboration and messaging footprint and keep pace with [Microsoft].”

It remains to be seen if the two companies will be more effective together, but it’s a good start. The combination of the two platforms helps both provide a more complete offering to its customers.

December 1, 2020
Salesforce Buys Slack for $27.7 Billion

Salesforce announced that it is buying Slack for $27.7 billion in cash and stock. The company says that combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. They say that the combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world.

Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $27.7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce’s common stock on November 30, 2020.

The transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022, subject to approval by the Slack stockholders, the receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told the Wall Street Journal that he is joining Salesforce and will continue to run Slack as a unit of Salesforce after the deal’s close.

“Stewart and his team have built one of the most beloved platforms in enterprise software history, with an incredible ecosystem around it,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “This is a match made in heaven. 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. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes.”

“Salesforce started the cloud revolution, and two decades later, we are still tapping into all the possibilities it offers to transform the way we work. The opportunity we see together is massive,” said Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Co-Founder. “As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organizational agility. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”

Slack to Become the New Interface for Salesforce Customer 360

Salesforce:

Salesforce is the #1 CRM that enables companies to sell, service, market and conduct commerce, from anywhere. Slack brings people, data and tools together so teams can collaborate and get work done, from anywhere. Slack Connect extends the benefits of Slack to enable communication and collaboration between a company’s employees and all its external partners, from vendors to customers.
Slack will be deeply integrated into every Salesforce Cloud. As the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360, Slack will transform how people communicate, collaborate and take action on customer information across Salesforce as well as information from all of their other business apps and systems to be more productive, make smarter, faster decisions and create connected customer experiences.

December 1, 2020
Microsoft Teams Offers CarPlay Integration, Improves Calling

Microsoft has announced significant improvements to Teams, adding CarPlay integration and improved calling features.

Microsoft Teams is one of the company’s premier applications, and has been steadily dominating the corporate messaging market. The company is staking so much on Teams, that it sees it as “a platform that transcends operating systems that will be even bigger than Windows.”

The latest announcement includes a number of significant improvements, including the ability to integrate with Apple’s CarPlay platform.

CarPlay support: Placing and receiving calls in the car will soon be easier than ever, thanks to CarPlay support for Teams Calling. With CarPlay, you can use your vehicle’s built-in controls to operate Teams, including using Siri to place and answer calls.

Microsoft is also improving the application’s calling features, helping Teams be a viable replacement for traditional phone options.

Transfer calls between mobile and desktop: Teams makes it easy to place and receive calls from several different endpoints, including desktop and mobile devices, but sometimes you need to move locations or devices to finish your call. Starting in early 2021, you will be able to shift your calls between your mobile and desktop endpoints with an easy-to-use interface on the Teams app.

Call merge: Calling users can bring multiple different one to one calls together to combine conversations and simplify multiple conversations. Call merge is now available for both PSTN calls and VoIP calls.

Teams has long surpassed Slack’s user base, even as Microsoft continues to expand the platform’s ecosystem and abilities. These latest features continue to demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to the platform and should be welcome improvements for customers.

December 1, 2020
Salesforce/Slack Deal Expected Tuesday

Salesforce and Slack are expected to announce a sales agreement Tuesday, in what would be Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date.

The two companies made headlines Wednesday with news that Salesforce was looking to purchase the iconic corporate messaging app. At the time, talks were thought to still be in the preliminary stages, with no indication a deal was in sight. Within hours, however, outlets starting reporting the talks were in the advanced stages.

Things have progressed quickly, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal says a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday after market close. CNBC’s David Faber reports the deal will be roughly half cash and half stock, although it may be slightly weighted toward the cash side.

Similarly, while initial reports valued Slack at $17 billion, it appears Salesforce will be paying a significant premium. Faber said the deal is not expected to reach $30 billion, but may come close.

Experts believe the acquisition will help Slack, as well as Salesforce, fend off Microsoft. Slack has been hurt by a number of factors, most significantly Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with Office. Microsoft’s tactics prompted Slack to file an antitrust claim with the EU, a claim Jim Cramer calls “strong.”

At the same time, Microsoft continues to go after Salesforce’s core CRM market. Its most recent inroad was a partnership with C3.ai and Adobe to create AI-driven CRM.

The combination of the two companies may ultimately help both compete with Microsoft more effectively.

November 30, 2020
Salesforce May Buy Slack

Salesforce may be looking to make its largest acquisition to date, possibly snapping up Slack, the popular corporate message platform.

Slack helped define the corporate messaging market and is used by organizations of all sizes. Recently, the company has faced increasing competition from Microsoft Teams, which has eclipsed Slack’s user base.

Nonetheless, Slack is still wildly popular and continues to strike deals with major companies. In February, IBM announced it was deploying Slack to all 350,000 of its employees. Similarly, in June AWS announced it was deploying Slack to all of its employees. In return, Slack migrated its voice and video calling services to Amazon’s Chime platform.

The AWS deal also spurred talk that Amazon might be interested in acquiring Slack. Despite Microsoft Teams’ larger market share, Slack is seen as the safe choice for companies that compete with Microsoft and don’t want to rely on a rival for their corporate communication. Given that AWS and Microsoft are the first and second-largest cloud providers, Slack seemed like a natural choice for AWS.

It appears Salesforce may be interested in purchasing the message platform, however, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The talks appear to be preliminary, and therefore may ultimately come to nothing. Should the a deal be struck, however, it would be the largest in Salesforce history, since Slack is currently valued at $17 billion.

Salesforce and Slack already integrate with each other. Given that both companies are locked in heated competition with Microsoft, joining forces may make sense. Salesforce, in particular, has been under increased pressure lately, with some analysts believing Microsoft’s open approach to data gives it a significant advantage over Salesforce. Microsoft has also partnered with C3.ai and Adobe to target Salesforce’s core CRM business.

It remains to be seen if the talks will bear fruit, but it is also possible Saleforce’s interest could spark renewed interest from other parties, such as AWS. Larger companies content to partner with an independent Slack may not want to see it come under the control of a possible competitor. This, in turn, may motivate them to make a move of their own.

November 25, 2020
Microsoft Teams Tops 115 Million Daily Users

Microsoft Teams has continued to gain users, passing 115 million daily active users, according to the company’s latest earnings report.

Microsoft Teams has been locked in a battle with Slack over the corporate messaging space. While Slack predates Teams by roughly four years, Teams has quickly risen in popularity, becoming one of Microsoft’s fastest-growing services.

In March, at the start of the pandemic, Microsoft made news when it passed 44 million users. Now its user base has more than doubled, coming in at more than 115 million daily active users.

What’s more, Teams is serving as a way of helping individuals use Microsoft 365 even more.

“As much as Teams has transformed work for our customers, it’s really the tip of the iceberg,” writes Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365. “Because as people work all day in Teams, they also get the full breadth and depth of Microsoft 365, the integrated suite of graph-connected productivity apps and experiences behind the familiar tools we all rely on every day to connect, collaborate, and get work done.

“For that reason, daily active usage only tells a portion of the collaboration story; a broader collaboration metric is needed to understand the changing ways in which we work and collaborate. What’s needed now is a metric that demonstrates the breadth of services people use and the new rich and varied ways in which collaboration happens across hybrid work environments. The true measure of collaboration transcends simple videoconferencing or chat-based communications. Our more holistic view takes into account the many ways people and teams engage in the flow of work. In Teams we see meetings, but also small group huddles, chats, calls, document collab, and individual work. And enabling all of it digitally is our vision for collaboration in the new digital age.”

Teams’ meteoric rise is further evidence of the ongoing and permanent digital transformation currently underway.

October 28, 2020
Box CEO: Pandemic Opened Up New Way Of Working

“It’s been a funny journey working remotely,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “A month or two into the pandemic I distinctly remembered that we actually started our company completely remotely. The move to this remote work style is causing us to realize how different managing and leading businesses and executing can be if we were able to take advantage of virtual technology more even when we go back to the office. This completely opens up a new way of working.”

Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, discusses at the CNBC @Work Summit how remote working that was forced upon companies has actually opened them up to a completely new way of working:

It’s Been A Funny Journey Working Remotely

It’s been a funny journey working remotely. A month or two into the pandemic I actually distinctly remembered that wait a second, we actually started our company completely remotely. My co-founder and I were going to two different colleges at the time and so the whole business was run over instant messaging. Before we had Slack we had AOL Instant Messenger. Before we had Okta we had really bad passwords. We were a remote company and we started our own product because we wanted to make it so people could easily access and share files from anywhere. That was the origin of the business.

Fast forward 15 years later, we have 2,000 employees, we work in offices, we have a lot of the standard ways you think about when scaling up the company. When we had to instantly move to a remote and distributed way of working it really hit me how much of the work style that gets embedded into our companies are really actually things that just carried forward from the 20th Century when everything was analog and everything was done in person. All communication was done between people either through written communication or just a meeting.

Pandemic Opened Up New Way Of Working

You realize that when you go virtual and you go remote there is actually so much potential to be able to work in a digital-first way. When you think about a team meeting as an example, so many of our meetings are arbitrarily sized to the number of people that fit into a conference room. So it’s kind of bizarre that work just happens to be the six to twelve people that can fit into a conference room space. Certainly for software projects or a particular team that’s a pretty good logical size. But that’s not the right size that contributes to a brainstorm. That’s not inherently the right size of people that you want when you’re communicating information and getting the best ideas around how to go drive the business.

So having that Slack channel with 150 people in it that cuts across different parts of the organization we are able to get contributions from people that would have never been in that conference room previously. That completely opens up a new way of working. Think of what you now do on video and the ability to include voices and ideas from people that previously wouldn’t have spoken up or wouldn’t have had an easy opportunity to contribute to some particular part of the business or strategy or have a two-way dialogue on a really important business topic.

Real Potential That We Want To Continue

We had a meeting with all of our top 200 leaders in the company last week and that was a complete bidirectional discussion in a way that would never have been possible in person. That’s usually a person with a microphone just communicating outward to everybody in the business and not actually having it be a dialogue to get feedback. The move to this remote work style is causing us to realize actually how different management and leading businesses and executing can be if we were able to take advantage of virtual technology more even when we go back to the office.

None of this requires you to be remote it’s just sort of the remote that was forced upon all of us to the point that we are now realizing that there is actually some real potential here that we want to continue to maintain going forward.

October 7, 2020
Slack’s Performance Issues Impacting Remote Workers

Slack started experiencing performance issues early Monday morning, impacting remote workers that rely on the service.

Slack is locked in a battle with Microsoft Teams for the corporate messaging market. While the service is widely popular, it can’t afford errors or missteps that Microsoft could capitalize on.

Unfortunately, Monday morning the service was experiencing significant performance issues impacting all three of its target platforms.

Some users may be experiencing slowness with Slack in the desktop, browser and mobile at this time. The issue is impacting sending messages and troubles with API calls.

As of mid-afternoon, the issues were declining, although many customers were still not seeing any improvement. The company had also not indicated what underlying issue caused the problem.

October 5, 2020
Slack Files Complaint Against Microsoft With EU

Slack has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the EU, claiming the company is engaging in anti-competitive practices with Teams.

Slack and Teams have been locked in a bitter battle over the corporate messaging market. While Microsoft’s app has far surpassed Slack, in terms of users, Slack has continued to rack up some impressive contracts. In particular, Slack has become a popular choice among companies that compete with Microsoft and don’t want to rely on one of their competitors for their communication.

Now Slack has upped the ante even more, filing a complaint with the EU. In particular, Slack is claiming that Microsoft is unfairly tying Teams to Office.

“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,” said Jonathan Prince, Vice President of Communications and Policy at Slack. “Slack threatens Microsoft’s hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft’s lock on enterprise software.”

Microsoft should be concerned by this complaint, as it is similar to the complaint that was successfully used in Microsoft’s antitrust case in 2001. To make matters worse for the company, the EU is currently scrutinizing numerous US companies for anti-competitive practices. All of this means that Microsoft may find itself in an unfavorable climate should Slack’s complaint move forward.

July 23, 2020
12 Percent of Slack Employees Started After Pandemic, Says CEO

“We’re already at the point where 12 percent of our employees started after the pandemic,” says Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. “They weren’t flown to headquarters for a week. They didn’t do the onboarding. They haven’t met casual acquaintances waiting for the elevator or at all hands. These kinds of weak social times and the cultural value that’s built up through those interactions are going to have to be realized in another way.”

Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, announces their acquisition of enterprise directory company Rimeto, which helps employees in large organizations connect with each other more efficiently:

12 Percent of Slack Employees Started After Pandemic

This morning we’re announcing the acquisition of Rimeto. Their tagline is the enterprise directory reimagined which is a great way to think about it. Obviously, that’s also going to be especially important now. We’re already at the point where 12 percent of our employees started after the pandemic. They weren’t flown to headquarters for a week. They didn’t do the onboarding. They haven’t met casual acquaintances waiting for the elevator or at all hands. These kinds of weak social times and the cultural value that’s built up through those interactions are going to have to be realized in another way.

We started talking (to Rimeto) just before the pandemic hit. I’ve actually never met any of the team face-to-face. No one on our side has met anyone on their side face-to-face. The whole thing was conducted using all of these technologies. We, of course, had a shared channel in Slack with them. It’s them, it’s us, it’s the lawyers, it’s the accountants, the whole kind of suite of entities that are required to pull off a deal like this. I think you’re going to see more and more of that.

Pandemic Causing Much Bigger Reliance On Software

I don’t think we’re going to be back in the office for a while. But to the extent that people do end up going back to offices, let’s say later this year or really next year, it’s still going to cause a generational shift. There is still going to be a much bigger reliance on software. A couple of weeks ago we announced Slack Connect. The idea is to increase the efficacy of collaboration across organizational boundaries while also increasing the security.

Two Sack users in an organization can set up a share channel between them or you can have more than one. In fact, when we did our convertible debt offering a month and a half ago, we did that in a share channel with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Jay Wood, and Latham, and put the whole thing together in that way. It’s a great way to collaborate.

Rimeto Let’s Slack Users Connect Within Organizations

Companies, obviously, are not going to stop acquiring. They’re not going to stop doing offerings. You’re still going to see IPOs and we’re going to see roadshows conducted in that way. When you’re crossing organizational boundaries the profile information, the identity of the person is also important. Inside the company with Rimeto, we’re offering much richer search, much more detailed information about groups and things like skills and backgrounds, not just the phone number and desk location.

We also want the ability to have some of that cross organizational boundaries so partners, collaborators, professional services firms, customers, and vendors can have access to some of that information as well.

12 Percent of Slack Employees Started After Pandemic, Says CEO Stewart Butterfield

July 8, 2020
Slack Acquires Business Directory Company Rimeto

Slack has announced it has acquired Rimeto, a company that has revolutionized business directory software.

Rimeto offers a unique approach to business directories, upgrading the concept from a bland list of names and contact info. Instead, Rimeto pulls information from across a company to develop a rich profile of each employee, including what projects they’ve worked on, what customers they’ve interacted with, their skills, experience and more.

Slack is especially interested in this technology during the pandemic, as employees are struggling to stay connected with their coworkers.

“If there’s one thing we’ve heard over and over from our customers and employees alike during the pandemic, it’s that people are struggling to stay connected,” writes the Slack Team. “We all want to understand the people we work with and have context around their lives. Employees with weak social ties to their colleagues aren’t as happy or productive as employees at companies with a thriving, healthy culture.”

Integrating Rimeto with Slack is a natural fit, and will significantly improve Slack’s profile and directory features. At the same time, Slack intends to keep offering Rimeto as a standalone product and continue supporting their existing customers.

This is good news for all parties. Slack will see a significant boost to their directory features, while Rimeto and their customers will likely benefit from the additional resources Slack brings to the table.

July 8, 2020
Investors Betting On Teams Over Slack

As the battle for corporate messaging clients heats up, investors and traders are beginning to choose whom they believe will be the winner.

Slack helped revolutionize the corporate messaging market and is still considered the market leader, in terms of features and maturity. In recent years, however, Microsoft Teams has gained ground, even surpassing Slack in overall users.

Despite Teams’ gains, Slack continues to be heavily used and has racked up contract after contract with some of the biggest names in tech. In spite of that, investors are worried about Slack’s long-term ability to successfully compete with Microsoft.

According to TheStreet, Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini downgraded Slack from neutral to sell based on these concerns.

“While we continue to view Slack as a best-in-class team messaging offering that is favored by the technical community, we expect Microsoft Teams to continue to try and leverage its packaging within Office 365 to drive increased adoption, thus creating the potential for a more competitive environment,” wrote Bellini.

Another factor in the equation is Slack’s existing customer base. Because it appeals to small and medium-sized companies, Bellini believes it is more vulnerable to coronavirus-related economic issues. Despite downgrading Slack, she maintains her target price of $30.

Microsoft has a long history of entering a market with what is widely considered to be an inferior product, when compared with the market leader. Leveraging the power of their operating system and business-class software, however, Microsoft is usually able to make significant headway while improving their initial offering.

Only time will tell if Slack is able to succeed where so many other companies have fallen to the juggernaut from Redmond. If not, it may lend weight to Amazon’s rumored interest in buying the company.

June 22, 2020
Amazon May Be Looking to Acquire Slack

Amazon may be looking to acquire Slack to better compete with Microsoft and Google, as well as cash in on the work-from-home trend.

Amazon and Slack recently inked a deal to deploy the messaging platform across the Amazon Web Services (AWS) workforce. At the same time, Slack committed to continued reliance on AWS as their cloud provider of choice, and will use Amazon’s Chime to power Slack Calls.

Daniel Newman, an analyst at Futurum Research, has told Business Insider that the deal may be part of a much bigger plan for Amazon.

“It’s a clear opportunity to get more deeply under the hood,” Newman told Business Insider. “Amazon’s Chime product is limited in adoption and Slack is beloved, but has no direction when you compare it to Zoom. Microsoft has Teams and Google has pretty complete meeting applications. When you look at a suitor like AWS, it’s a really good potential fit.”

While no one knows for sure if Amazon is actually looking to purchase Slack, the move would make a lot of sense and shore up perceived weak spot. AWS leads the cloud market, but does not have the depth of software offerings that its rivals do, especially Microsoft and Google. Both of those companies have communication platforms that are hugely popular. This has led analysts to speculate Amazon might make a move for Slack even before this deal.

Should the speculation prove true, the move could significantly alter the messaging market and give Amazon a competitive advantage.

June 19, 2020
AWS Deploys Slack Across Workforce

Slack has scored another major win, as Amazon Web Services (AWS) has adopted the messaging platform for all its employees.

The deal is part of a collaboration between the two companies, with Slack continuing to use AWS as its preferred cloud provider. Meanwhile, AWS will deploy Slack to all its employees to help teams communicate more efficiently.

As part of Slack’s ongoing reliance on AWS, the platform will migrate to Amazon’s Chime voice and video calling service to power Slack Calls. The company assures customers they will not notice any difference in the short-term. In the long-term, using Amazon Chime to power Slack Calls will enable the company to add more features and advanced capabilities.

“The future of enterprise software will be driven by the combination of cloud services and workstream collaboration tools,” says Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder and CEO of Slack. “Strategically partnering with AWS allows both companies to scale to meet demand and deliver enterprise-grade offerings to our customers. By integrating AWS services with Slack’s channel-based messaging platform, we’re helping teams easily and seamlessly manage their cloud infrastructure projects and launch cloud-based services without ever leaving Slack.”

The partnership will likely benefit both companies, with Slack’s customers standing the most to gain.

June 5, 2020
Online Ads Gaining Traction Amid Pandemic

Research shows that ads are gaining traction as more people are working online and relying on the internet for all aspects of life.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues spreading around the globe, an untold number of individuals are working from home. For many, e-commerce has suddenly become a lifeline, providing a steady supply of food and essentials. Zoom, Slack, Skype, Teams, and other videoconferencing applications are keeping employees connected to work, and families connected to loved ones. Mobile apps are serving as a welcome distraction for people struggling to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

Amid such conditions, many companies have pulled back on their advertising efforts and budgets. According to Playground XYZ, however, there are a number of advertising categories that are experiencing greater engagement during the pandemic. Specifically, Playground XYZ found that consumer attention on ads was up 7% for February and 6% for March, compared to the previous six months. Home & Garden, Personal Finance and Food & Drink saw the largest gains, at 21%, 23% and 21% respectively. Another significant finding is that users paid more attention to ads the longer they looked at a site. For example, users who spend approximately 300 seconds on a site had a 250% higher attention index over the baseline, emphasizing the need for companies to focus on long-form and editorial content.

Similarly, Global Web Index (GWI) found that 27% of individuals are reading Business & Finance articles online. Similarly, “87% of U.S. consumers and 80% of UK consumers say they’re consuming more content.” While video and streaming take the top spots, the point remains that people are craving more information now than ever before. Just as important, “68% of millennial podcast listeners say they intend to keep consuming just as much after the outbreak, indicating potential areas of revenue for digital content providers in the aftermath of the crisis.” Again the point is clear: patterns of behavior and content consumption that are created now will likely continue long-term.

While the coronavirus pandemic is creating challenges and hardships for businesses of all size, there is also a tremendous opportunity to deliver the content users are looking for—and gain lifelong customers as a result.

April 20, 2020
Cantor Fitzgerald Initiates Coverage of Zoom, Slack With Bullish Outlook

Financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald has initiated coverage of Zoom and Slack, giving both an Overweight rating.

Zoom and Slack have been the darlings of the work from home era. Zoom is widely considered to have one of, if not the, best videoconferencing platforms that works equally well for large and small groups. Similarly, Slack is one of the most widely used chat platforms and has seen significant growth.

According to Barron’s, Cantor analyst Drew Kootman set price targets of $150 and $30 for Zoom and Slack, respectively.

“We believe the current Covid-19 environment presents significant upside potential not currently assumed in the stock,” Kootman wrote in a research note. “Zoom provides a superior communication platform in a time where video and connectivity is becoming more important for all industries and business sizes. We expect the virus to provide upside to estimates and for the platform and its products to drive increased market penetration and future cross-selling opportunities. We expect these impacts to continue to drive multiple expansion.”

The coverage should be a boost to both companies and further reaffirms their status as the pandemic changes how Americans work.

April 14, 2020
Microsoft Using AI For Noise Suppression in Teams

Microsoft is working on using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the sound quality of meetings in Teams.

Microsoft Teams has been experiencing significant growth, both before and during the pandemic, as it takes on its chief rival Slack. As millions of people shelter in place and work from home, chat and videoconferencing software has become their lifeline to the outside world for work, association, family time and more.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest irritations with videoconferencing is often the background noise—the cat meowing, dog barking, child playing or significant other watching TV. Now Microsoft is planning on using AI and machine learning to tackle the problem.

As Robert Aichner, Microsoft Teams group program manager, told VentureBeat, the issue lies in cancelling non-stationary vs stationary noise. Stationary noise is constant, such as a computer’s fan. As such, stationary noise is relatively easy to suppress and Microsoft’s products, such as Teams and Skype, already do that. The challenge is suppressing non-stationary noise, such as a dog barking, a car horn blowing, or someone else in the room suddenly making noise.

“That is not stationary,” Aichner explained. “You cannot estimate that in speech pauses. What machine learning now allows you to do is to create this big training set, with a lot of representative noises.”

This is where machine learning comes, training the system using good and bad data examples, to help it better understand what needs to be filtered.

“We train a model to understand the difference between noise and speech, and then the model is trying to just keep the speech,” Aichner continues. “We have training data sets. We took thousands of diverse speakers and more than 100 noise types. And then what we do is we mix the clean speech without noise with the noise. So we simulate a microphone signal. And then you also give the model the clean speech as the ground truth. So you’re asking the model, ‘From this noisy data, please extract this clean signal, and this is how it should look like.’ That’s how you train neural networks [in] supervised learning, where you basically have some ground truth.”

The in-depth report at VentureBeat is a fascinating read, and shows what is possible as companies continue to use AI and machine learning across applications.

April 13, 2020
Microsoft Continues Cloud Hiring, Freezes Other Areas

As the global pandemic continues to take its toll, Microsoft is freezing hiring for many roles, but is continuing to hire for its cloud division.

According to a report, employees told Business Insider that “Microsoft is still hiring for roles within its massive cloud computing business, and the company was holding virtual hiring events for software engineers as recently as last week. Some groups, one employee said, are ‘prioritizing consumer-facing and critical roles.’”

The news should come as no surprise, given the impact of the pandemic. As governments have called on individuals to social distance and stay at home, and as companies have sent their workers home with orders to telecommute, the cloud computing industry has entered its heyday. From Slack to Teams, Office 365 to Google Docs, Zoom to Skype, people are relying on cloud-based software and solutions like never before.

In view of that, it makes sense that Microsoft would continue hiring for its cloud division. It’s likely that any increase in Microsoft’s cloud personnel will be permanent and far outlast the current crisis, due to the fundamental shift in the workforce the pandemic is causing. The longer it goes on, the more likely current telecommuting trends will become the norm, resulting in a permanent demand for cloud-based solutions.

April 9, 2020
Trello Brings Butler Integration to Slack and Jira

Popular project management tool Trello has announced its Butler automation feature now integrates with Slack and Jira.

Butler allows users to automate actions based on a schedule, click of a button or rule-based triggers. The tool can be used on almost any Trello action, and provides a way for users to create automated workflows.

According to a post on the company’s blog, “with the addition of Butler integrations into Slack & Jira, that automated workflow can now extend even further beyond the boundaries of Trello to the tools where other teammates are working—bringing them into the process and keeping everyone informed as work moves forward.”

The new integrations will be a welcome addition to Slack, Jira and Trello users, giving users a powerful way make automation part of their routine.

April 9, 2020
Slack Adds Support For Microsoft Teams Calls

Despite a heated rivalry, Slack has announced support for Microsoft Teams calls.

Slack and Microsoft Teams are vying for control of the corporate messaging market. Teams boasts the larger user base, while Slack prides itself on having more engaged users. Both platforms have their unique advantages. Teams benefits from being part of Microsoft’s software ecosystem. Slack, on the other hand, is quickly setting itself apart as the option for companies who compete with Microsoft and are reluctant to rely on the software giant for their communications.

In a move few would have expected, Slack has announced that it now supports Microsoft Teams calls, eliminating one more reason why some users might migrate away from Slack. Now, in organizations where different departments use different options, the newfound interoperability should help ensure Slack doesn’t become an extraneous platform.

As the company’s description highlights, individuals can “bring video conferencing where your team is already working in Slack, from launching a call to joining meetings directly from event reminders.”

This is a good move on Slack’s part and should further solidify its place in the corporate messaging world.

April 3, 2020
Slack CEO: We’ve Seen an Enormous Surge

“In the first 60th percent of this quarter added 9,000 new paid customers,” says Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. “That’s a net number. This is compared to 5,000 for the previous quarter and 5,000 for the quarter before that. That’s an enormous surge. We’ve also seen the number of messages sent per user up 25 percent. Suddenly people are discovering a lot of techniques that were available to them before that suddenly become mandatory.”

Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, discusses via Zoom on CNBC how the pandemic has doubled their pace of growth:

Customers Added Has Nearly Doubled

You think about what people hope to accomplish out of having a meeting. It’s often to get a decision made. It’s to update people on the status of projects. There’s a whole bunch of reasons to have a meeting. There’s an immediate obvious switch that goes off in people’s heads, hey we used to sit in the same room and now we’re at home, we need to have a videoconference. But the best way to support that work in getting the decision made, getting people on the same page, and knowing where you can ask the question is often better served by other methods. In the case of Slack, that’s channels.

In the first 60th percent of this quarter added 9,000 new paid customers. That’s a net number. This is compared to 5,000 for the previous quarter and 5,000 for the quarter before that. That’s an enormous surge. We’ve also seen the number of messages sent per user up 25 percent. Suddenly people are discovering a lot of techniques that were available to them before that suddenly become mandatory. When the only tools you have to get work done are meetings and email and meetings suddenly become a lot harder to pull off you begin to look for alternatives.

Right Now It Looks Great For Us

We look at what might happen on the small business side (on whether we will see sustained growth). There could be millions of bankruptcies and that will obviously affect us. We have a very healthy small business part of Slack. Enterprises can shut down spending. On the other hand, we’ve seen the surge in sign-ups so obviously people are seeing the need. We also see expansion in existing enterprise customers. It’s very hard to know how those two forces balance each other out.

There are other things to consider too. I’ve been talking to other software CEOs. What do you do when you’re not doing field marketing events to drive new customers? What do you do when your salespeople can’t travel? What do you do when your executive briefing centers are shut? How is that going to manifest in pipeline and growth in 3, 6, 9, 12 months? Right now it looks great for us but it’s impossible to say how this takes out over the year.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield: We’ve Seen an Enormous Surge

March 30, 2020