Story by Jonathan Dame, Tech Target
Facing growing pressure from Microsoft and Cisco, Slack is expected to remain competitive in the team communication apps market because of its loyal customers and strong reputation.
Despite the growing competition from platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Spark, Slack is in a strong position to continue winning customers over the next several years because of its mature product, loyal customer base and reputation as a leader in the team communication apps market.
Released in 2013, Slack revolutionized the way millions of workers get work done through its teams-based platform for persistent instant messaging. The platform was so successful that virtually all unified communications vendors — and scores of startups — released or acquired their own workstream collaboration platforms in response. Even consumer giants like Amazon and Facebook have entered the emerging market.
Competitor vendors like Microsoft, Cisco and Avaya will be able to work with large legacy customer bases to drive top-down adoption of their team communication apps. Slack, in contrast, will continue to rely heavily on the bottom-up approach that fueled its initial success, according to the vendor’s CTO and co-founder, Cal Henderson.
