[SomeStupidPoint]

Microsoft has a well regarded developer network and Q&A system regarding Microsoft technologies, at least in my (limited to primarily Azure) experience.

Similarly, Microsoft has already operated a widely used integrated chat, profile, and community system at scale. Given their recent pushes, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to bring back similar platforms for business users integrated with LinkedIn.

That would eat a lot of Slack's potential big clients, because MS has a history of enterprise grade support on products like that, and Slack has scale issues for large orgs.

[blakeyrat]

Does Slack even allow on-premise installs yet? That instantly disqualified them from the last 3 jobs I've had. (All of which had data protection issues that prevented them from using off-premises IM systems, mostly HIPAA regulations.) Microsoft's got that market already sewn-up, right out of the gate.

[Pyxl101]

As far as I'm aware Slack does not offer on-premise installs. (On-premise in this case could mean running in my own account at a cloud service provider) It's unfortunate because I'd love to adopt them as well at my current company, but it will be very difficult to achieve if the only option is to become yet another tenant of some large multi-tenant infrastructure.

Microsoft will quickly take over this market if they offer an easy-to-manage on-prem solution that's integrated with the company directory, as it seems they've done. Plenty of firms already have Exchange and ActiveDirectory and Skype for Business.

[Daviey]

I think this is one reason teams use hipchat, because it does provide this.

[8_hours_ago]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft Team doesn't currently have a self-hosted option. I hope it's in the pipeline because my company can't use an offsite IM service. It would be nice if Microsoft added support and then Slack followed. Competition is good!

[it33]

Mattermost is an open source, self-hosted Slack-alternative: https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-o...

[oddvar]

There is also Matrix (matrix.org), an open standard for decentralized communications. Our goal is to let all apps talk to each other - including Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams!

Check it out using any Matrix-enabled app: https://matrix.to/#/#matrix:matrix.org

[cmdrfred]

Skype can be self hosted.

[irodoramatic]

For enterprise companies that already use a lot of MS services, and which have tight security policies on what software can be used/licensed/installed, an MS Slack clone could be a wonderful thing for employees.

[ganset]

Having worked for a company with security concerns and tightly coupled to Microsoft, Lynx fucking sucks and a MS Slack alternative would have made my short time there much more bearable.