Salesforce To Acquire Slack Today

Microsoft’s most important competitor in the communications sector will probably be able to fall back on significantly larger resources in the future: Slack can be taken over by the business service provider Salesforce, the deal is to be officially announced today.

Salesforce will present its financial statements for the last quarter after the market closes this evening. And the opportunity should also be used immediately to announce the takeover. This emerges from a report by the US broadcaster CNBC. It should be one of the larger acquisitions of recent times – after all, Slack’s stock is currently valued at around $ 24 billion.

The fact that there are talks between the two companies has been reported several times in the last few weeks. However, it was still unclear how far the negotiations had progressed. The fact that things are going so fast is a little surprising. After all, this is one of the biggest deals the software sector has seen in recent years. For comparison: Microsoft’s takeover of LinkedIn was $ 27 billion.

Backing for the little one

The merger with Salesforce should make it much easier for Slack to assert itself against Microsoft’s teams. Here the company has to do with the classic problem of the smaller company: although it offers – and this has been confirmed by various parties – the better product, there is little to oppose the marketing and sales power of the larger competitor.

For example, Microsoft is making Teams available to the numerous subscribers of its Microsoft 365 packages as a free bonus. For full access to Slack, however, you have to pay separately. The little challenger has already turned on the competition authorities in this matter, as Microsoft’s approach is seen as a classic abuse of the dominant market position. With Salesforce as a major provider of business software, you now also get strong economic backing.