Slack boss Stewart Butterfield has poured cold water over Microsoft's figures for Teams adoption during the coronavirus pandemic.
The CEO was speaking to Market Watch about his own company's spike in users and the inevitable comparison to Teams seemed to get under his skin.
Butterfield said the week starting March 9 was the "most productive" in his company's history with a surge of new users turning into a "steep vertical" in two weeks. It took the platform four years to reach 10 million users, but from 10 March to 25 March, that number had grown by 2.5 million.
There are a number of cloud-based services that have seen a big spike in users following the spread of COVID-19. Videoconferencing tools have become vital tools for people to connect with friends, family and work colleagues and Slack is also benefiting from the lockdown. It has, however, also increased the scrutiny upon its rivalry with Microsoft, which seems to irk Butterfield.
"You probably sense the frustration in my voice," he said on Market Watch. "Microsoft has made a huge push the past three years with a free service, but can you find a single Slack enterprise customer who has switched to Teams?"
"If Microsoft is such a competitive threat to Slack as it says, we would not have grown in sales and $1 million customers. I mean, 44 million is an impressive number, but that is out of 200 million Office 365 customers. That's about a 20% adoption rate."
Butterfield's comments come just two weeks after he announced a Teams call integration on Slack, that suggested the two would bury the hatchet, but the CEO and his company have a history of firing barbs at the enterprise giant. Butterfield previously called Microsoft's behaviour "unsportsmanlike" and in a tweet, Slack referred to it as a "boomer". Despite recently going public, and also it's rapid growth, Slack and Butterfield still see themselves as a startup taking on the corporate giant.
"The smaller startup has an advantage against the large, established company because its focus is narrowed on doing one thing better," Butterfield added.
IT Pro has approached Microsoft for comment.
-
AI is helping bad bots take over the internetNews Automated bot traffic has surpassed human activity for the first time in a decade, according to Imperva
-
Two years on from its Series B round, Hack the Box is targeting further growthNews Hack the Box has grown significantly in the last two years, and it shows no signs of slowing down
-
What the UK can learn from the rest of the world when it comes to the shift to IPSponsored From the Netherlands to Singapore, UK organisations can learn lessons from forward-thinking countries and make the PSTN switchover as seamless as possible
-
The big PSTN switch off: What’s happening between now and 2025?Sponsored The challenges of adopting IP telephony can be overcome, but you don't have long to act
-
How digital marketing will evolve beyond social mediaIn-depth Twitter's ongoing destabilisation proves businesses can't rely on social media for digital marketing forever
-
TD Synnex Maverick announces availability of Zoom for partners in EuropeNews Partners now have access to the entire Zoom portfolio, including unified communications platform Zoom One
-
Best Twitter alternatives for businesses and IT professionalsIn-depth With its long-term viability as a networking and commercial space in question, the industry is casting its eye to several Twitter alternatives
-
BT Wholesale is bringing EE’s mobile connectivity to partnersNews The partnership will provide access to EE’s 4G and 5G networks as the PSTN switch-off approaches
-
Why engineering teams love SlackWhitepapers The adaptive collaboration hub for software engineering
-
Avaya's Wavenet partnership aims to deliver affordable enterprise-quality UCaaSNews The collaboration combines unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) and contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) with bundled calls and minutes
