Salesforce acquires Slack for $27.7B. What lies ahead in the digital collaboration space?

Just when we thought the collaboration space was plateauing with multiple players who were reaching saturation points with features and tools, the industry woke up to news that Slack was being acquired by Salesforce for $27.7B.

- Suresh Sambandam, CEO, Kissflow

While it is a jaw dropping figure and definitely overkill even taking into account the success of Slack, conversations are picking up within the industry about what this means for the digital collaboration space. To really understand what we’re looking at, we need to first view this from Slack’s perspective.

Was acquiring Slack a good move on the part of Salesforce?

The acquisition makes a lot of sense for Slack. However, whether it is a good move for Salesforce is something we will have to wait to see. Trends indicate that when large companies acquire agile and high-growth companies, things mostly don’t go well. While that is a conservative outlook, we need to remember that Slack had inherent premium value before the acquisition. It is also a powerful chat platform in all aspects. If Salesforce lets Slack remain what it is without large scale integration and change, chances are high this could be a successful acquisition similar to other recent big tech acquisitions. Salesforce also had a failed strategy issue earlier when they acquired Chatter. As this acquisition is fairly recent, we will have to wait to see what Salesforce has in mind for Slack.

What does the deal mean for the collaboration space?