Salesforce buys Slack for $27bn

San Francisco: Cloud software firm Salesforce has announced it has completed the acquisition of Microsoft Teams rival and enterprise chat platform Slack for $27.7 billion. Announced in December last year, Salesforce said that combining Slack with its Customer 360 platform will be transformative for the industry.

"We couldn't be more excited to have Slack as part of the Salesforce family, combining the #1 CRM and the trailblazing digital platform for the work anywhere world," said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce. The $27.7 billion acquisition of workplace collaboration app Slack was touted as an expansive buy and according to analysts, the deal will see no change in the short term for Salesforce and Slack customers.

Bret Taylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce, said that together, "Slack and Salesforce Customer 360 will give every company in the world a single source of truth for their business and a single platform for connecting employees, customers, and partners with each other and the apps they use every day." According to Forrester, employees are more engaged with Salesforce applications in the way they work and communicate.

"If Salesforce can't deliver on this, it paid a huge price tag that will result in relatively little impact," Kate Leggett, Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester, had said.