Slack attempts to replace email with Slack Connect tool

Slack has made its pitch for organisations to finally ditch email with the launch of Slack Connect.

From today, up to 20 organisations can be added to a single Slack channel, enabling businesses to bring more of their external ecosystems, such as an entire supply chain or third-party marketing, into Slack.

Previously two companies could connect this way via 'shared channels', but through trials, Slack has expanded that capability with the aim to add more in the coming years. The communications platform suggests this is a more secure way of communicating with other partners.

The company also said it would add efficiencies to workflows, taking conversations out of "siloed email inboxes" and into the right channels with the right people. This way, organisations can come together to work and make decisions more quickly with customers, vendors and partners, according to Slack.

"My vision, as the CISO at Slack, is to make Slack the most secure collaboration environment for businesses," Said Larkin Ryder, CISO of Slack.

"When you think about the things you have to do as a CISO to make your email environment secure, you have layers and layers of products that you're adding on to address things like spam and phishing on an ongoing basis.

"Email is an open front door to security threats to an organisation - $12 billion in losses are caused by business email scams, and 90% of data breaches are from phishing. If you want a more secure collaboration solution for your organisation, the first thing you can do is take your employees out of email and into Slack."

Slack suggests that its enterprise-grade security features and compliance standards can help prevent data loss. Its recently announced partnership with AWS has also helped to shore up the service with Enterprise Key Management, giving organisations increased control over their data and who can see it.