Salesforce Strikes Deal to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Salesforce strikes deal to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion:
Salesforce, a cloud-services company that targets businesses, has announced that it will acquire workplace communication service Slack for $27.7 billion. The announcement follows a week of rumors and a steep bump in Slack's value on the stock market in anticipation of the deal being made official.
Neither company has yet to announce in any detail what this will mean for users and customers. Salesforce is sure to include Slack in some of its broader bundles and, to more tightly integrate Slack with its other software services, "Slack will be deeply integrated into every Salesforce Cloud" and will become "the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360," the press release says.
But anything else beyond that is speculation at this point. New features and development priorities or adjusted pricing models are possibilities, but we also don't yet know when any user-relevant changes related to this acquisition will actually take place, either.
While Salesforce and Slack signed a definitive merger agreement, the deal is not final. "The transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2022, subject to approval by the Slack stockholders, the receipt of required regulatory approvals, and other customary closing conditions," Salesforce's announcement said. The second quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2022 will end on July 31, 2021. The deal could be reviewed by the incoming Biden administration.
The mutual benefits for Slack and Salesforce as businesses are clear, even if it's wait-and-see in terms of any benefits or downsides for users and customers. Salesforce is in a fierce competition with Microsoft to win over businesses that are in the market for cloud-based services and products. Microsoft runs arguably the most significant Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, but Salesforce had not matched either Slack or Teams with an equivalent offering.
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