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by gopher2 2593 days ago
Not that it'd be easy but I imagine that you can steal their customers by adding chat rooms and integrations slowly to some other type of software, rather than a more direct angle where you have to win at one of those two moments.
2 comments
closeparen 2593 days ago
My employer ran several pilots of alternative chat systems alongside our primary. It sucked. Having both clients open, remembering which rooms are actually in active in which systems, etc. was obnoxious. Might work for a single closed-loop team but even then.
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lloydde 2593 days ago
Microsoft Teams with their decent video conferencing might have an angle plus being “free” part of 365.
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depressedpanda 2593 days ago
The company I worked at previously tried to force MS Teams on everyone. Problem was that most developers there ran Linux and the client was far inferior to Slack on that platform. Unsurprisingly very few developers used Teams and it failed horribly as a decent communication replacement. It became yet another communication channel devs may, or may not, respond in. End result: email still reigns supreme, complemented by xmpp for the non-devs with the technical know how to understand how to connect to the internally hosted server.

So my view is that until Microsoft get their act together, Teams is not a serious contender to Slack. Companies can get it "free" together with their Office subscription, but most developers won't use it until it works decently on their development platform of choice.

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SketchySeaBeast 2593 days ago
That's the discussion we're actively having now. My only concern is how to move the knowledge and context that's currently in Slack somewhere else. Also, who knows if Teams will actually catch on - though with Microsoft threatening to get rid of Skype, it'll end up being the more official looking meeting app anyways, so why not bring the rest along?
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addicted 2593 days ago
I’m pretty sure Teams is here to stay. It’s growing. MS is investing a lot of resources and it’s improving rapidly.

But I think your point about MS getting rid of Skype for Business in favor of Teams is the most important one. Once that happens, which MS has stated publicly, Teams will become a necessary app for MS to support, since enterprises won’t tolerate MS not having s chat service in O365.

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