Name: Microsoft Is Poised to Make a Dent in Office Messaging
Uploaded: 2016-09-07
Duration: 2 min 14 s
Description: It already has LinkedIn and Skype.

[ SOUND ] Microsoft is reportedly building its own competitor to Slack. Bob, can Microsoft compete in office messaging? It sure can, Erin. Look, Microsoft dominates the workplace. It's got Office Suite, it's got Outlook, it's got LinkedIn. Know what else it has? It has Skype. And Skype is the perfect Slack killer. In fact, rumour has it that their Slack killer is called Skype Teams. So yeah, my money is on Redmond in this case. Well yeah, but the problem here is that Microsoft already has its own Slack killer. It's called Yammer. They bought it in 2012 before Slack was even a thing [ LAUGH ], and they paid $ 2 billion for it. And if you haven't heard of Yammer before, it's because Microsoft has done a terrible job at promoting it and getting people to use it. [ LAUGH ] And Microsoft also tried to buy Slack Slack for $ 8 billion and that didn't work out either. So right now they're 0- 2 in Office messaging. Microsoft is in midst of a comeback. Their stock is almost at an all time high. They're building AI bots. They're building holograms. They've got the Cloud, Erin, the Cloud. [ LAUGH ] In fact, do you remember when Amazon was the only name in Cloud infrastructure? No longer, because Satya Narayana moved in there and he has totally taken the competition By force they are killing it right now. Microsoft can absolutely do this. Building a chap app is way easier than doing hardware. Listen, all that stuff is well and good. But selling a chat app is very different than selling enterprise software. And Microsoft is super good in selling enterprise software. They started at the top They go down, it's called elephant hunting in the enterprise world. That's in their DNA. Slack and other chat apps have thrived by kind of going from the bottom up. They get little teams to adopt it and then eventually the whole company is using it and they have to buy it on the enterprise level. That's not in Microsoft's DNA. You're massively overestimating the difficulty here. Look, all Microsoft has to do is flip a switch. Ton's of people use Skype already. and suddenly, everybody's chatting and sharing emojis and gifts and whatever on Skype teens, and plus lack has had a lot of difficulties selling into large enterprises. They haven't been able to meet the same compliance requirements and security needs that these organizations have and Microsoft excels at that. They have a huge opportunity to gain ground here. That's a fair point. For one show that never slacks, come to fortune. com for more tech debate.