So long Slack! Survey finds Microsoft Teams has already squashed it

A modern-day David vs Goliath battle is currently being fought by corridor warriors, and the prize is the title of the most used business collaboration platform.

The contestants are independent company Slack vs the most valuable company in the world, Microsoft’s Teams app, and according to corporate network analytics company Spice Works, Slack’s early lead has already been eclipsed.

In their November 2018 survey of 901 respondents from organizations across North America and EMEA, they found 21% of companies were using Teams, up 18% from 2016, while Slack was used by a paltry 15% of companies, with only 2% growth from 2016.

In fact, Spiceworks expected 41% of companies to use Microsoft Teams in another 2 years, while Slack will only grow another 3% by 2020.

Other collaboration platforms are not expected to do even that well. Google Hangouts is expected to reach 12% of users and Workplace by Facebook only 1%. Another Microsoft product, Skype for Business is however still expected to lead with 53% of businesses.

“The sudden rise of Microsoft Teams is likely influenced by the fact that it’s available at no additional cost to Office 365 users,” said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. “Although Skype for Business has maintained the lead overall, Microsoft is putting more of an emphasis on Microsoft Teams as the default communications app for Office 365, which is enticing organizations to give it a try. As a result, we’ll likely see Teams adoption rates double in the next couple years.”

The survey also found Slack was favoured by smaller companies and Teams by bigger ones. 7 percent of small businesses (with less than 100 employees) use Slack compared to 13 percent of large businesses with more than 500 employees. Conversely, large businesses are more likely to use Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts: 25 percent of large businesses use Teams and 18 percent use Hangouts, compared to 17 percent and 8 percent of small businesses, respectively.

The full report can be read here.