Salesforce, a customer relationship management (CRM) company, has acquired Slack for US$27.7 billion.
With the acquisition, Slack will become the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360. In the press release, Salesforce noted that it’s looking to “give companies a single source of truth for their business,” by unifying the platforms they use within their existing workflows. In other words, it’s looking to provide more services for its product suite.
In recent years, Slack’s market share has been chipped away by Microsoft Teams. To cement its position, Slack signed a multi-year agreement with AWS to host Slack’s voice chat and video meetings on Amazon Chime. Amazon has also been selected as the preferred partner for Slack’s core functions including security, storage, and database. Amazon has also agreed to use Slack as its primary communication tool in its workplace.
“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,” said Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO in a Dec. 1 press release. “Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”
Digital communication platforms boomed in parallel with the work from home transition. On March 25, Slack’s concurrent user count hit 12.5 million. Similarly, Microsoft reported that it had 75 million Team users at the end of May.
Slack shareholders will receive US$26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of FY 2022.