Dive Brief:
- Microsoft unveiled its much-anticipated Microsoft Teams enterprise chat platform on Wednesday, according to a company press release.
- Microsoft Teams will be part of the Office 365 suite and be accessible across devices.The platform features threaded messages, cloud service integrations, third party application integrations, a bot framework and open APIs so developers can create their own offerings.
- In the lead-up to Teams' announcement, Slack, the biggest direct competitor for Teams, ran a full-page in ad in The New York Times (also published on its site) offering Microsoft advice about the enterprise chat experience and making the case for its product.
Dive Insight:
The enterprise chat marketplace is getting more crowded. Numerous enterprise communication platforms such as Slack and Atlassian's HipChat already have a firm place in the market. Just last month, Facebook revealed its own enterprise communication platform, Workplace by Facebook, a tool similar to its consumer model but customized for businesses.
Slack, which has enjoyed much market hype, won't easily release its hold as one of the leaders in the chat platform space. On Wednesday, in anticipation of Microsoft's announcement, Slack took out a full page ad in The New York Times to write an open letter to Microsoft about its new tool, welcoming it as a "worthy competitor" and an organization that can help Slack further define the new product category.
As TheVerge notes, the full-page ad Slack ran — which echoes one Apple put out in the 80s to taunt IBM over PCs — could be a sign the company is sweating the competition from Teams, given Microsoft's significant brand power and presence in enterprise applications.
Despite arriving late to the game, Microsoft could quickly grow its market share, especially given the built-in infrastructure provided by its widely-used Office suite and the ability to integrate chatbots from the Bot Framework, which is open to thousands of developers.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the enterprise chat field is the growing role automated response and virtual assistant technologies play. On the same day Teams was announced, HipChat became integrated with Amazon's Alexa, allowing for voice command capabilities on its platform.