As somebody working in the healthcare industry, this is the killer feature for me:
>Q. What level of security and compliance does Microsoft Teams support?
>A. Microsoft Teams is expected to be Office 365 Tier C compliant at launch. This broad set of global compliance and data protection requirements includes ISO 27001, ISO 27018, EUMC, SOC 1 Type I & II, SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA and FERPA. Microsoft Teams also enforces two-factor authentication, single sign on through Active Directory and encryption of data in transit and at rest.
The last time I'd looked into it, Slack was explicitly not HIPAA-compliant and therefore a non-starter for my team. We've basically had to stick to a combination of Hangouts for general chat and internal email for any HIPAA-covered data, so this would be a big win for us.
Wow that is huge... HIPPA is a massive headache for industries that have typically been very "blue collar" Ie. EMS/Firefighting. We are always looking for ways to communicate more effectively, especially for our most at risk citizens (coordinating agencies). This could be an almost real-time notification system... hmm.
This is exactly why Slack is not a defensible product.
1) The UI/interaction/UX can (and obviously will) be replicated, which has been slack's biggest value proposition.
2) There's no "stickiness" for companies. None of the data in chat is really a "system of record" and the switching costs are minimal. 3rd party bots/integrations are the only thing that really make it sticky for companies.
3) The IP isn't really all that interesting. Chat based systems have been around since day 1 of the TCP/IP protocol and it's design patterns are pretty well known. In other words, the tech can be replicated.
What do you mean, not defensible? As in, it shouldn't exist, or there's no way it can be profitable long-term?
I think it's a great product experience, but as you say, without adding more value, it can be replicated by Zulip/Rocket.Chat/Mattermost/Cisco Spark/Microsoft Team/ you name it.
Microsoft Office doesn't have a moat but they had better product and engineers than the competition and turned that into phenomenally successful business.
I think you are overly discounting the advantage for Slack having done this for 4 years already.
When Office 365 came out, I mostly compared the price to Google Apps and didn't really think Office 365 brought that much value.
Now, you can have a Google Apps, Slack, Trello, and Evernote alternative for your business under one subscription. Even if you choose the plan for installed Office applications on your computer, the price is still much more attractive than having to get a subscription for every one of the competitors.
Edit: They even have a Zapier and IFTTT competitor:
Whats funny is that Google Wave was basically a direct predecessor to these types of apps and they killed it before the technology really had a chance to catch up to the vision.
> Now, you can have a Google Apps, Slack, Trello, and Evernote alternative for your business under one subscription.
Actually you made a great case for why these guys should partner, integrate their products in a clean, natural way, and then make it as easy as ever for existing and new customers to hop onto all at once -- combo SaaS.
> Now, you can have a Google Apps, Slack, Trello, and Evernote alternative for your business under one subscription.
Long term/philosophically this is is unwise, because you're locking your business' data into one company and then it dictates the direction in which your ideas can expand.
Google Apps aside, all these apps are developed by highly creative and agile (fast) companies.
MS is just an executive switch away from being a monolithic elephant once again..
By that measure, SharePoint is also an alternative to a lot of things, but it is universally reviled.
But your comment made me wonder about the problem of building a company which becomes a feature of a bigger competitor: I wonder what the folks at Slack, Trello and Evernote think about this new competition. Is this going to actually compete head on?
The cheapest plan for Office 365 that includes this is the $5/user/month, which undercuts Slack's pricing.
It also includes a bunch of other stuff that I'm far less excited about; I wish they had gone with a more a la carte approach. I'm not confident that I'll be able to easily integrate this with the identities that I routinely use.
Also, it seems like an unwieldy name -- "I'll 'team' that to you", or "let's discuss this on 'team'"? I guess you'll just use "chat" and assume that context conveys the remainder.
Two really unique things I think this product does
1) The use of GIFs/memes. While this seems silly, it is actually a big deal because it lowers the formalization of communication. Having used this product, you just have much better free flowing conversation and many times these "fun" items help you get the message across significantly better (ex. asking for updates or bumping things can now be done in a funny way).
2) Creation of a horizontal matrix. Having tabs is awesome because it makes information more compartmentalized and helps keep the priority the same on each screen. This essentially adds an extra layer of depth into the product without overcomplicating things (and imagine one day having ability to live edit documents on a tab, while chatting and seeing metrics). Keeping a multi-dimensional communication design model is very scalable to mixed reality too.
Essentially I see MSFT Teams as "Slack meets Google Hangouts meets Email", and see it doing very well from a product sense. However, their business strategy of bundling with O365 will not help them hit SMB, which is a conscious decision I think they made. I would have actually used Teams as a trojan horse to capture stickiness and then upsell users to O365, but overall still excited to see where this goes.
not trying to insult you or anything but microsoft probably doesn't really care. make most of their money from contracts with companies with thousands of people.
Whether or not Slack has the better product or not, Microsoft will blow past them in terms of paying customers. Slack has 1.25 million paying customers as of now. Microsoft announced it signed a 400,000-employee comppany on launch day. They can easily sign Coca Cola, Macy's, McDonalds and Unilever in a matter of months, which could bring them at most 10 million paying customers. Microsoft has the power of existing customers to connect to. This is very much the Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories situation but for team communication.
The point might be moot but there is a difference between enterprise licenses and active users. In some big multinational business a subscription with a service like Office 365 signed and paid for at the parent corp level often means dick. Services like this are sometimes a negotiable value add so it may not even be on the radar in terms of implementation for the parent corp. Even when it is many child companies/divisions have a lot of latitude to choose how they collaborate because the bureaucratic corp IT groups are often unaligned with the child companies and focus on cost cutting. Ultimately they are inherently focused on providing a least common denominator solution which often ends up sucking equally for everyone.
To put it another way, look at something like SharePoint. Microsoft will happily tell you it has a ton of users. They might tell you that it's quite profitable. But SharePoint is a just a terrible piece of shit that everyone hates but IT departments drag everyone to it kicking and screaming.
So subscriptions will get purchased, contracts signed. Microsoft will make money. But will they take mindshare? Maybe Slack won't be able to differentiate enough. Time will tell but today employees actually want Slack.
Is this the worst ad in the history of advertising? HUGE publicity for Microsoft, with a schoolboy level of condescending, passive aggressive nonsense. Not sure what they were thinking with this one, especially with an opening line doing nothing but praising their competitor.
They are copying Apple [1]. It's supposed to demonstrate strength, since most competitors try to pretend that the competition doesn't exist. To me it always came off as really dumb and self-important in the most cringing of ways.
The "do it with love" part is especially funny as their support doesn't actually give a shit what their customers think or feel. They'll happily give you absolute bottom-of-the-barrel effort canned copy-paste responses to carefully written and considered bug reports, indicating the agent neither actually read nor remotely understood what you were writing about.
Slack doesn't have a box to stand on to tell others how to treat people.
All Office 365 customers who are on Slack must be seriously considering moving over to Microsoft Teams right now. They are basically letting them know they have an alternative.
I've got an evil grin on my face just thinking about Microsoft's response to Slack. I hope they respond and I hope they don't let me down -- there's a prime opportunity here.
Haven't tested Teams yet, but very shrewd move by Microsoft. They lead in the productivity suite with Office/Skype/Sharepoint etc in enterprises and a slack competitor which tightly integrates all their services is a wonderful addition. As someone mentioned on this thread, they could have picked a better name "Let me microsoft team it to you" sounds weird.
HIPAA compliance...nice, just killed all the "secure email/chat for healthcare" startups out there, since this is coming from the makers of Outlook/Office/every enterprise machines' OS.
Wonder how long until Slack upgrades their compliance.
So I just tried the desktop app and it’s terrible. Fuzzy fonts almost everywhere, feels sluggish. It keeps nagging about the mobile apps.
And then it popped up randomly over an hour after closing it, happily informing me that I got the latest updates. Thank you, but no.
The web app refuses to work with anything but the very latest browsers. Why? Probably no reason at all. It also doesn’t work in IE, which is kind of sad. It also consumes humongous amounts of memory, as does the desktop app.
The avatars, blurry too, of course, are embedded as Base64 Data URIs. Why?
All in all this is yet another collaboration tool from Microsoft. It feels very rushed.
We're a team of five people all remote and in different time zones. We use Slack, and its been great, but we also use Office 365. Teams with its wide integration with all the different MS products is really cool. What I see missing here is mobile apps, and 3rd party integration. Once those are available we'll have no reason to pay the extra $300 a year for Slack.
I won't trust Microsoft to make the Mac version of this product as good as the Window's version. There is a long history of Office development that supports this conclusion. If you use Mac in your workplace, probably best to stay away from MS stack
1) Is this a cloud/online product, or does it require desktop installation?
2) I see it mentioning the a Preview is available, but I can seem to find it on my Office 365 apps panel (I'm a Business Premium account/user).
1) It's both cloud based and has a desktop app. I believe the demo screenshots I saw were all in the browser though.
2) There was a mention that it wasn't available immediately but should start showing up somewhere in the dashboard around 1:30 EST. You might have to find it somewhere deep in the settings if I remember what someone else showed me. I.e. it's not in the main app grid by default and has to be enabled.
If they offered it a la carte I would be a lot more interested. Our company is just getting over Microsoft hegemony. I'll never be part of getting back into that by buying Microsoft services that are intertwined.
The requirement to have an Office 365 account will not allow it to grow. I understand Microsoft wants people to pay for Office 365 and then for more and more services, but they need to have a free tier so that influencers can try out their solutions, and then the money will come on its own! So, the "new" Microsoft is not really "new" in its marketing strategy. I was unpleasantly surprised that as a developer I cannot use Hyper-V on Windows 10 Home either as the Hypervisor is free with macOS.
[+] [-] commandar|9 years ago|reply
>Q. What level of security and compliance does Microsoft Teams support?
>A. Microsoft Teams is expected to be Office 365 Tier C compliant at launch. This broad set of global compliance and data protection requirements includes ISO 27001, ISO 27018, EUMC, SOC 1 Type I & II, SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA and FERPA. Microsoft Teams also enforces two-factor authentication, single sign on through Active Directory and encryption of data in transit and at rest.
The last time I'd looked into it, Slack was explicitly not HIPAA-compliant and therefore a non-starter for my team. We've basically had to stick to a combination of Hangouts for general chat and internal email for any HIPAA-covered data, so this would be a big win for us.
[+] [-] monkmartinez|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|9 years ago|reply
1) The UI/interaction/UX can (and obviously will) be replicated, which has been slack's biggest value proposition.
2) There's no "stickiness" for companies. None of the data in chat is really a "system of record" and the switching costs are minimal. 3rd party bots/integrations are the only thing that really make it sticky for companies.
3) The IP isn't really all that interesting. Chat based systems have been around since day 1 of the TCP/IP protocol and it's design patterns are pretty well known. In other words, the tech can be replicated.
4) It's not solving a core technology problem for most business without introducing additional problematic externalities. http://www.businessinsider.com/i-used-to-be-obsessed-with-sl...
[+] [-] rhubarbquid|9 years ago|reply
That's not true where I work. Slack's history is full of valuable information that we use all the time.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|9 years ago|reply
I think it's a great product experience, but as you say, without adding more value, it can be replicated by Zulip/Rocket.Chat/Mattermost/Cisco Spark/Microsoft Team/ you name it.
[+] [-] ec109685|9 years ago|reply
I think you are overly discounting the advantage for Slack having done this for 4 years already.
[+] [-] partycoder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EduardoBautista|9 years ago|reply
Now, you can have a Google Apps, Slack, Trello, and Evernote alternative for your business under one subscription. Even if you choose the plan for installed Office applications on your computer, the price is still much more attractive than having to get a subscription for every one of the competitors.
Edit: They even have a Zapier and IFTTT competitor:
https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/
[+] [-] Touche|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j1vms|9 years ago|reply
Actually you made a great case for why these guys should partner, integrate their products in a clean, natural way, and then make it as easy as ever for existing and new customers to hop onto all at once -- combo SaaS.
[+] [-] user5994461|9 years ago|reply
Opposite here. Forced to use Google Apps to write documents and it's a pain in the arse. Wish I had Office.
[+] [-] basch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delegate|9 years ago|reply
Long term/philosophically this is is unwise, because you're locking your business' data into one company and then it dictates the direction in which your ideas can expand.
Google Apps aside, all these apps are developed by highly creative and agile (fast) companies.
MS is just an executive switch away from being a monolithic elephant once again..
[+] [-] thr0waway1239|9 years ago|reply
But your comment made me wonder about the problem of building a company which becomes a feature of a bigger competitor: I wonder what the folks at Slack, Trello and Evernote think about this new competition. Is this going to actually compete head on?
[+] [-] pzenger|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boundlessdreamz|9 years ago|reply
I wish it was otherwise. As you said, they do have a good suite of apps at a fair price
[+] [-] Edd314159|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewla|9 years ago|reply
It also includes a bunch of other stuff that I'm far less excited about; I wish they had gone with a more a la carte approach. I'm not confident that I'll be able to easily integrate this with the identities that I routinely use.
Also, it seems like an unwieldy name -- "I'll 'team' that to you", or "let's discuss this on 'team'"? I guess you'll just use "chat" and assume that context conveys the remainder.
[+] [-] devy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] probe|9 years ago|reply
1) The use of GIFs/memes. While this seems silly, it is actually a big deal because it lowers the formalization of communication. Having used this product, you just have much better free flowing conversation and many times these "fun" items help you get the message across significantly better (ex. asking for updates or bumping things can now be done in a funny way).
2) Creation of a horizontal matrix. Having tabs is awesome because it makes information more compartmentalized and helps keep the priority the same on each screen. This essentially adds an extra layer of depth into the product without overcomplicating things (and imagine one day having ability to live edit documents on a tab, while chatting and seeing metrics). Keeping a multi-dimensional communication design model is very scalable to mixed reality too.
Essentially I see MSFT Teams as "Slack meets Google Hangouts meets Email", and see it doing very well from a product sense. However, their business strategy of bundling with O365 will not help them hit SMB, which is a conscious decision I think they made. I would have actually used Teams as a trojan horse to capture stickiness and then upsell users to O365, but overall still excited to see where this goes.
[+] [-] ijafri|9 years ago|reply
Slack $7/month/user just for teams :///
anyhow i hate office so i am gonna stick to gsuite..
[+] [-] udkl|9 years ago|reply
Currently it costs $12.50 per enterprise user per month.
https://paypal.slack.com/pricing/slack-for-teams
[+] [-] thesimpsons1022|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slackoverflower|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brazzledazzle|9 years ago|reply
To put it another way, look at something like SharePoint. Microsoft will happily tell you it has a ton of users. They might tell you that it's quite profitable. But SharePoint is a just a terrible piece of shit that everyone hates but IT departments drag everyone to it kicking and screaming.
So subscriptions will get purchased, contracts signed. Microsoft will make money. But will they take mindshare? Maybe Slack won't be able to differentiate enough. Time will tell but today employees actually want Slack.
[+] [-] overcast|9 years ago|reply
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-microsoft-t...
Is this the worst ad in the history of advertising? HUGE publicity for Microsoft, with a schoolboy level of condescending, passive aggressive nonsense. Not sure what they were thinking with this one, especially with an opening line doing nothing but praising their competitor.
The confidence(arrogance) is astounding.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/jobs-apple-welco...
[+] [-] Mithaldu|9 years ago|reply
Slack doesn't have a box to stand on to tell others how to treat people.
[+] [-] algorithmsRcool|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EduardoBautista|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Touche|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] urda|9 years ago|reply
> The author has chosen not to show responses on this story. You can still respond by clicking the response bubble.
So not only is the arrogance higher than ever, you can throw cowardly in there as well.
[+] [-] jlgaddis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vthallam|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slackoverflower|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Corrado|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asidiali|9 years ago|reply
Wonder how long until Slack upgrades their compliance.
[+] [-] fuzzy2|9 years ago|reply
And then it popped up randomly over an hour after closing it, happily informing me that I got the latest updates. Thank you, but no.
The web app refuses to work with anything but the very latest browsers. Why? Probably no reason at all. It also doesn’t work in IE, which is kind of sad. It also consumes humongous amounts of memory, as does the desktop app.
The avatars, blurry too, of course, are embedded as Base64 Data URIs. Why?
All in all this is yet another collaboration tool from Microsoft. It feels very rushed.
[+] [-] aarpmcgee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanclatworthy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KayL|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Yabood|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmode|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softwarefounder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Periodic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotAgain|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolay|9 years ago|reply