Salesforce has announced the acquisition of Slack, reported on last week, ahead of the virtual iteration of its Dreamforce event.
The CRM supplier said it has agreed to buy Slack Technologies for $27.7bn in stock and cash.
As noted by the Financial Times, the deal is the largest in the cloud software-as-a-service industry, eclipsing Microsoft’s $26.2b splurge on LinkedIn in 2016.
Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce, said: “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.”
For his part, Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and co-founder, said: “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.
“As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organisation, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organisational agility,” he said. “Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”
Slack will become an operating unit of Salesforce and Stewart Butterfield will continue as CEO.
The deal will combine Slack’s instant messaging and related software with Salesforce’s sales and marketing software.
According to a press statement, 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,” it said.
The transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022.
From a UK perspective, Stephen Kelly, chair of Tech Nation, said: “Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack reflects that, for software companies, the adage ‘grow fast or die slowly’ applies more than ever.
“As organic growth of its CRM market leadership slows, acquisition has been a core engine for revenue growth and innovation,” he said.
“Salesforce has made multiple innovation acquisitions, as well as buying companies with customer bases in adjacent markets. The acquisition of Slack reflects all of these basic drives, and is an increasingly strong offer as the coronavirus pandemic forces workers to adopt new forms of communication and collaboration software, putting this at the heart of daily life for office workers.”
Salesforce has been growing significantly by acquisition in recent years. In 2019, it acquired data visualisation company Tableau, and in 2018, it acquired applications and data integration supplier Mulesoft.
In a comment previously provided for Computer Weekly, Angela Ashenden, principal analyst for workplace transformation at CCS Insight, said: “In order to maintain the high rate of growth that it has achieved for the past few years, Salesforce has been investing in initiatives that will enable it to expand its footprint in customer organisations. However, the majority of its current applications portfolio doesn’t allow it significant reach beyond the sales and marketing organisation.
“Salesforce has long been eyeing the employee collaboration opportunity – as far back as 2010, when it launched Chatter, later followed by Community Cloud – but neither really provided an extended reach outside sales,” she said. “Its acquisition of Quip in 2016 was another step in this direction, but Quip hasn’t really expanded its reach within customers either.
“Acquiring Slack would be a major boost here, and Slack’s integration and app story would also play well with Salesforce’s strategy,” said Ashenden. “The potential of Slack Connect and creating a B2B collaboration network would also jive well with Salesforce’s business enablement story.”
SAP has recognised that customers will face challenges and costs when they upgrade to S/4 Hana. It has set out a roadmap to simplify integration, in a bid to lower the transition cost of moving from ECC to the S/4 platform. This infographic shows why most SAP users have positive impressions of SAP S/4Hana.
Companies need to work on ensuring their developers are satisfied with their jobs and how they’re treated, otherwise it’ll be …
Companies must balance customer needs against potential risks during software development to ensure they aren’t ignoring security…
With the right planning, leadership and skills, companies can use digital transformation to drive improved revenues and customer …
Ransomware incapacitated Baltimore County Public Schools’ network just before Thanksgiving, but the school system said students’ …
A spokesperson for K12 told SearchSecurity that based on the current status of the investigation, the attack did not affect …
A security operations center can help lessen the fallout of a data breach, but its business benefits go much further than that. …
SD-WAN, SASE or some combination of the two — which approach will deliver the best and most secure network connectivity in your …
Celona 5G technology uses Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum to bring private mobile networking to the enterprise, …
Cisco DevNet certifications require a lot of time investment, but network pros who pursue the certifications say the gained …
Colocation is not a silver-bullet solution for everyone. Discover the benefits and drawbacks that come with allowing a …
Finding the right server operating temperature can be tricky. ASHRAE standards provide guidance for all server classes and what …
These unexpected charges and fees can balloon colocation costs for enterprise IT organizations.
The enterprise edition of the MySQL database is being enhanced on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to enable users to run analytics …
The U.S. government has made data sets from many federal agencies available for public access to use and analyze. Check out some …
Check out this excerpt from the new book Learn MongoDB 4.x from Packt Publishing, then quiz yourself on new updates and …
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2000 – 2020, TechTarget
Privacy Policy
Cookie Preferences
Do Not Sell My Personal Info
