Enlarge /. You could say Slack evaporates in the Salesforce cloud.
Salesforce, an enterprise-grade cloud services company, has announced it will acquire Slack workplace communications service for $ 27.7 billion. The announcement follows a week of rumors and a sharp surge in Slack's value on the stock market pending official release.
Neither company has yet revealed in detail what this will mean for users and customers. Salesforce is sure to include Slack in some of its broader plans. To more closely integrate Slack with its other software services, "Slack will be deeply integrated with every Salesforce cloud" and will be "the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360" press release says.
But everything else beyond that is speculation at this point. New functions and development priorities or adjusted pricing models are possible, but we also do not yet know when user-relevant changes in connection with this acquisition will actually take place.
The mutual benefits for Slack and Salesforce as a company are obvious, even as they wait and see about the benefits or drawbacks for users and customers. Salesforce is in fierce competition with Microsoft to attract companies in the market for cloud-based services and products. Microsoft may lead Slack's most important competitor, Microsoft Teams, but Salesforce hadn't compared Slack or Teams with an equivalent offering.
The acquisition of Slack strengthens Salesforce's service portfolio as it tries to win over companies for contracts that would make Salesforce more or less a central point of contact for these companies.
advertising
On the flip side, Slack has had a few issues since going public last year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating a remote working revolution that would be expected to benefit a remote communication tool for businesses. The company has struggled on its profitability path, and its valuation has fluctuated since going public but has rarely grown significantly above its original price.
Slack's valuation in the market has jumped dramatically since the acquisition rumors broke. In early November, the company's shares were valued at just $ 24.10. As of today's market close, stocks were as high as $ 43.84.
As is customary with such announcements, executives from both companies have made statements. Here is the word from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff:
(Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield) and his team built one of the most popular platforms in enterprise software history with an incredible ecosystem … this is a match made in heaven. Salesforce and Slack will work together to shape the future of business software and change the way everyone works in the fully digital world from anywhere. I'm very excited to see Slack join Salesforce Ohana after the transaction is complete.
And from Slack & # 39; s Butterfield (who previously founded the photo sharing website Flickr and the quirky gaming platform Glitch):
Salesforce started the cloud revolution and two decades later we are still taking all opportunities to change the way we work. The opportunities we see together are enormous … As software plays an increasingly important role in the performance of any company, we share the vision of reduced complexity, higher performance and flexibility, and ultimately a higher degree of alignment and organizational agility. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in software history and I can't wait to get started.
"Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $ 26.79 in cash and 0.0776 Salesforce common shares for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $ 27.7 billion based on the closing price of the company Salesforce common stock on November 30, 2020. "reads the press release.
