With the turn of the recent events, the scenario in every workplace has changed. Enterprise communications tools have taken over the corporate world. Video conferencing apps and other online management apps have taken over the world of business. Apps like Microsoft Teams and Zoom have seen their user base skyrocketing, with the potential not declining anytime soon. Microsoft’s rival, Slack has also partnered with Amazon to enter the field.
Slack has signed a multiyear agreement with Amazon, bringing in a lot of benefits for the companies. One of the highlights of the deal is the fact that Amazon employees will now be able to use Slack. Before this, IBM was Slacks biggest consumer. Slack extended its services to about 350 thousand IBM employees. Currently, Amazon is the second-largest private-sector employer in the United States. With over 840 thousand employees, Amazon might take over IBM to become Slack’s largest consumer base. Amazon Chime would also be benefited by using the user interface of Slack. Even though it has a user interface of its own, Slack’s user interface will help the user have a richer experience.
Slack is also getting hugely benefited by the deal. Even before the deal, Slack was not using rival, Microsoft’s Azure. The deal puts an end to any future possibilities on the use or Azure or Google Cloud. According to an interview on The Verge, Slack will be using Amazon “for storage, compute, database, security, analytics, machine learning, and future collaboration features.” Slack has received a lot of criticism in the past for its poor voice and video conferencing feature. With the move on to Amazon Chime, these have a high potential for improvement. There has also been a promise for an AWS Chatbox.
While Slack has been focusing on making things appealing to enterprises, Microsoft Teams hasn’t lagged. It has made a mark in the industry and beating it will not be easy. Microsoft has also been working on its plans so that Teams doesn’t lag. It is offering Teams in the bundle of Office 365, to tempt businesses to not go for the rivals. Microsoft has also told users that they will be able to choose from customizable templates on Teams. There will also be a provision for admins to create new custom templates. This feature is expected to roll out in a few months.
