Salesforce has acquired Slack in a $27.7 billion megadeal, marking a deeper integration into enterprise social for the CRM powerhouse.
It didn’t come as a surprise. Salesforce acquired Slack because it was just impossible for them not to. Slack has lost around 40% of its value since it went public, making a deal hard to ignore.
More importantly, Slack is bringing Salesforce closer to its main competitor and arch-rival Microsoft. The latter saw a significant spike in usage for Teams – its business communication software that is often a choice by default for large corporations around the world.
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Teams has been a key priority for Microsoft, especially since COVID-19 has changed the work organization worldwide, making businesses rely more than ever on business communication solutions to manage remote workforces.
And Slack was exactly what Salesforce needed. Its ability to integrate with other enterprise software will make its integration within the Salesforce product suite extremely easy. Slack bots will also be a definite plus, providing Salesforce customers with a central place to work, directly as part of their Salesforce tools.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder, and CEO said in a statement: “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.”
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield added: “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.”
The deal did not provide information about whether existing Slack customers will be moved on to a Salesforce platform. However, there will likely be no change in how the platform operates as a standalone in the near future.
According to both Yahoo and Google Finance, Slack’s valuation was just over $25 billion, which, given its very modest price change after-hours, means that the market priced the company somewhat effectively. Slack is up around 48% from its valuation that preceded the deal becoming known.
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