There’s really no question at this point that Microsoft
has managed to make itself relevant again. Under CEO Satya Nadella, the software giant has
stormed the cloud computing business, revived its corporate culture, and in April
surpassed $1 trillion in market value. But if you have any lingering doubts, consider what Microsoft’s rivals have to say about it.
In its
S-1 filing,
Slack, the San Francisco-based software maker, describes Microsoft as
its primary competitor. In the burgeoning world of
workplace-collaboration apps, there is perhaps no higher praise.
Slack,
which launched in 2014 and plans to list directly on the public market
June 20, boasts more than 10 million users in 150-plus countries. More
than 600,000 organizations use its tools.
Microsoft, long known for Office 365 and Outlook email systems, launched Microsoft Teams in 2017 to directly compete with Slack. Two years later, Teams is already catching up and helping Microsoft move into the modern office.
More
than 500,000 organizations, including 91 of the Fortune 500 companies,
use Teams, according to Microsoft. Last March, Teams was used by more
than 200,000 organizations, up from 50,000 during its launch year.
Microsoft, which has not disclosed the number of individual users, has
said that Teams is the
fastest-growing app in the company’s history.
Microsoft also has
been focusing its attention on non-desk workers,
with customization that let workers manage shift schedules or request
time off directly from their mobile devices. (Slack has not indicated
that it is targeting the non-desk workforce, although a handful of
enterprising businesses in industries ranging from farming to retail to
healthcare have become adopters of its software.)
With
Teams, thanks to the integration of the Office 365 suite, you can
access video, Outlook, and documents (the latter of which you can edit)
directly from the app.
Reference - https://qz.com/work/1619049/microsoft-teams-is-quickly-gaining-ground-on-slack/
