Story by Matt Weinberger, CTPost
Microsoft made a bunch of new updates to its Office 365 cloud productivity suite for businesses today, most of which hinge on the concept of collaborating with your colleagues.
For instance, Microsoft announced a free version of Teams, the workplace chat software bundled into Office 365, which competes with $5 billion startup Slack and $15.8 billion Atlassian’s Stride.
Now, any group can get going with Microsoft Teams, though there’s a 20GB file storage limit and it’s capped at 300 people. If you want to go beyond those limits, you have to pony up for Office 365 at a per-user cost of either $5/month or $12.50/month, though that price includes the whole Office suite of apps and services, too. Having a free version will get Teams into more people’s hands, intensifying its rivalry with its smaller competitors.