Salesforce buys Slack

Salesforce buys Slack to expand its cloud footprint

by | Dec 3, 2020 | News, UC & C

The Slack buy will enable Salesforce to compete head-to-head with Microsoft, the enterprise communication industry leader.
Share to lead the transformation

Enterprise software major Salesforce announced today that it is acquiring workplace chatting app Slack in a massive $27.7 billion cash and stock deal. As part of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock against each Slack share. Salesforce is buying Slack to meet the new digital transformation demands of enterprises.

For unversed, Slack is the workplace collaboration software used by organizations as an email alternative. By far, this acquisition is the largest in Salesforce’s two-decades-long history, exceeding its Tableau software purchase, which was estimated at $15.7 billion. Once the transaction is complete, Slack will become an operational unit of Salesforce and continue to be run by the CEO Stewart Butterfield, popularly known as Flickr co-founder.

As Covid-19 cases surge, businesses are re-architecting how they are working and communicating with customers, users, and employees. For organizations, collaborative tools and solutions have become essential in ensuring business continuity and providing an exceptional experience for a growing distributed workforce. That’s what sparked Salesforce’s attention for Slack. (See: How is digital transformation shaping the new future?)

For Salesforce, the most exciting aspect of the purchase is to link its Customer 360 tool with Slack Connect. Salesforce Customer 360 tool enables businesses to connect Salesforce apps and create a unified customer ID to get a complete overview of the customer.

Slack currently has over 70,000 paying customers that are using Slack Connect.

Transformative approach

Slack was first designed for internal office communication. It then became one of the most popular messaging and collaborative tools for virtual meetings, focusing on making it easy for employees to get essential information at a glance. Today, it offers easy instant messaging, rapid file sharing, and integrations with many top-notch services.

Slack’s technology engine allows developers to add the Slack API to their existing ecosystem or merge with various other tools through integration. The most significant advantage Slack boasts about today is its ability to integrate more than 2,400 diverse apps that people use to work together and connect.

With the acquisition, through its cloud-based platform, Salesforce aims to create and provide workspace apps to connect customers in a whole new way. The CRM major is hugely optimistic that the amalgamation will create the broadest open ecosystem of apps and workflows for organizations and allow millions of developers to develop the next generation of apps, using clicks instead of code.

Marc Benioff, Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce, seems to be so thrilled about the deal that he has declared the acquisition as a match made in paradise. “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape enterprise software’s future and transform how everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes,” Benioff said in a press release.

Face to face with Microsoft

In 2021, cloud technology will continue to play a pivotal role in driving business for most organizations. The focus will be on integrating new technologies and analytics to link people and data across systems, applications, and devices. Salesforce is preparing to address these needs faced by commercial enterprises in today’s digital universe and maintain pace with its rival Microsoft. (See: Technology trends for businesses in 2020)

Slack’s buyout is an effort by Salesforce to beef-up the communication apps ecosystem. The purchase of Slack Technologies will enable Salesforce to compete head-to-head with Microsoft Teams, the industry leader in the enterprise communication space, and Cisco Webex.

Over the past few years, Microsoft Teams has achieved several new improvements and achieved substantial growth, primarily since it integrates well with the MS Office 365 subscription productivity package with the Azure Cloud. (See: Online project management tools: Top office suite analysis)

Even in the CRM software space, where Salesforce’s Sales Cloud has been leading for a long time, Microsoft is making rapid progress. Microsoft’s Dynamics platform appears like a serious threat to the supremacy of Salesforce. Businesses that are already running plenty of Microsoft tools mostly prefer the Dynamics platform because of their quick integration.

Salesforce seems to have also sensed the urgency to expand its horizons into the collaboration software space, which has become lucrative amidst the COVID-19 turmoil. The Slack buy will also help Salesforce take a quantum leap in meeting its customers’ new transformation needs.

“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. I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going,” says Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Cofounder, in a statement.

The Slack buy came after Salesforce had put a lot of effort into creating its enterprise collaboration tool, Chatter, in 2009, and very recently, Salesforce Anywhere with limited success.

 

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Climate Change: Javadekar takes charge

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Briefing the media after assuming the charge, the Union Minister said it is like a home coming for him as he already served in the ministry for two years in the first term of NDA government. He stressed that we will strongly reinforce that this ministry is seen as a facilitator and not merely as a regulator. “Economic growth and environment protection should go simultaneously, and we need to work with an increased impetus towards that”, said Javadekar.

After assuming the charge, the Minister also held a meeting with the senior officers of the Ministry where he was briefed on the key initiatives and policy issues of the Ministry.

Infosys Foundation Opens Aarohan Awards 2019

Infosys Foundation Opens Aarohan Awards 2019

social-impact

The awards would recognize solutions that could positively impact the underprivileged in India. (Representative image)

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys, has announced the launch of the second edition of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards. The award is aimed at accelerating innovation in the social sector. The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards 2019 seek to recognize and reward individuals, teams or NGOs developing unique solutions that have the potential to positively impact the underprivileged in India, at scale.

Speaking at the launch of the second edition of the awards, Infosys Foundation Chairperson Sudha Murty said, “The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards 2018 was a huge success. Infosys Foundation witnessed a very good response from social innovators across the country and eventually, 12 leading innovators were recognised and awarded. The overwhelming response we got last year, has reaffirmed my belief that there are innumerable innovators across India who are looking up to this platform to give wings to their passion by scaling their innovation and impacting millions of lives. With the second edition of the awards, we hope to discover these hidden social innovators across the country and help them scale the power of their social innovations”

The awards will accept submissions across six categories, namely, Healthcare, Rural Development, Destitute Care, Women’s Safety & Empowerment, Education & Sports, and Sustainability.

The submission process for the second edition of these awards commences on July 15, 2019 and will continue till September 30, 2019. Participants can submit entries describing their work in the form of videos that can be uploaded on the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards website. The entries must be of a fully functioning prototype, not just a concept, idea or mock up. Additionally, the project must not be an established commercial venture.

Aarohan Social Innovation Awards will also offer winners an opportunity for residential technical mentorship at the IIT Hyderabad campus for up to 12 weeks to help them further develop and scale their solutions.

A panel of distinguished judges will evaluate and select the winners whose submissions will be assessed on five broad criteria – application to a social problem or need, innovative use of technology, originality of ideas, ease of use and the quality of presentation. The jury will comprise Prof. Trilochan Sastry, former Dean, IIM Bangalore; Padma Shree Arvind Gupta, an Indian toy inventor and science expert; Prof. Anil Gupta, visiting faculty member, IIM Ahmedabad, a globally renowned scholar of grassroots innovations and founder of the Honey Bee Network; Prof. GVV Sharma, Faculty member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Coordinator, Teaching Learning Centre, IIT Hyderabad; Sumit Virmani, Senior Vice President and Global Head – Marketing, Infosys, and Infosys Foundation Chairperson, renowned author and philanthropist Sudha Murty.

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