Microsoft Teams Rockets Past Slack in Enterprise Chat Race
Riding on Office 365's success, the Microsoft Teams collaborative chat application has raced ahead of the more entrenched Slack.
That's a key takeaway of a recent Spiceworks survey of its community of IT professionals. The firm saw Teams surge seven times in usage share over two years, with the 900 respondents in North America and EMEA projecting another doubling of usage over the next two years.
"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, in a statement accompanying the survey results Monday.
According to the Spiceworks survey, Microsoft's own Skype for Business has the biggest share at 44 percent. However, Slack-versus-Teams is the high-profile battleground, and in just two years since its launch, Teams has vaulted ahead according to the survey. Teams is now at 21 percent share, up from 3 percent in 2016. Slack is at 15 percent, up from 13 percent two years ago.
Looking ahead to the end of 2020, 53 percent of users expect to be using Skype for Business, 41 percent expect to be using Teams, 18 percent expect to be using Slack and 12 percent expect to be using Google Hangouts.
"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," Tsai said.
The survey found that overall usage of chat apps is increasing among businesses, with usage up 20 percentage points to 62 percent this year compared to 2016. At the same time, the expectation that chat apps will supplant e-mail is down among IT pros to 16 percent from 25 percent two years ago.
As they shift to Teams, organizations seem to be trading innovation and usability for security. Survey respondents found Slack the most innovative. They ranked Teams fourth for reliability, compatibility and user-friendliness, behind Skype for Business, Slack and Google Hangouts, respectively. But Teams was viewed as the leader for security, manageability and cost-effectiveness.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 10, 2018