Microsoft Teams' massive growth puts it ahead of Slack

[midian182]

In brief: When it comes to collaborative chat apps, Slack is one of the most popular options available, but the platform is languishing in the face of Microsoft Team’s growing popularity. According to a new survey, the Redmond firm’s software is now the second most-used chat app for businesses—a result of its massive growth over the last couple of years.

The report comes from IT network Spiceworks, which surveyed 901 organizations across the US and Europe. It found that the most popular collaborative chat app in the workplace is Skype for Business, which is used by 44 percent of participants. Next is Microsoft Teams with 21 percent, followed by Slack (15 percent), Google Hangouts (11 percent), and finally Workplace by Facebook, which is used by just 1 percent of those interviewed.

What’s most interesting here is Microsoft Teams’ monumental growth over the last 24 months. It jumped from 3 percent usage in 2016—the year it launched—to its current 21 percent. Slack, meanwhile, only grew 2 percent over the same period, while Hangouts fell by 5 percent.

“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.”

Spiceworks predicts that Teams’ growth won’t slow down over the next couple of years. By the end of 2020, it’s expected to be used by 41 percent of organizations, while Slack is predicted to rise by just 3 percent. This is mostly because of Microsoft’s announcement that Teams would be the primary client for meetings and calling in Office 365 over Skype for Business.

While some see the rise of these collaborative chat apps as a threat to email’s existence, industry workers disagree. Only 16 percent of IT professionals who were surveyed believe chat apps will replace email within three to five years.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/77799-microsoft-teams-massive-growth-puts-ahead-slack.html

 

[Mister_K]

Who uses Hangouts? I think that statistic has to be somewhat inflated by "used it once but never again" as its bundled with GMAIL. Yet to come across someone that actively uses it.

 

[RaXoR]

Teams sucks. Had to go from Slack to it and it is so limited in comparison.

 

[j05hh]

Many of my users want Skype back. Thanks Microsoft.

 

[Kibaruk]

For some reason it feels like it's not a good comparison, while yes, Skype and Teams are used for communications, they are so worlds apart that it can't be compared to each other much less to Hangouts or Facebook for workplace. I have to admit I have not used Slack and it looks very similar to Teams in screenshots, however...

Teams is a portal that actually connects users to the O365 world, integrating into the tens of tools that they have to offer on their licensing and almost everything is "free", things like Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint, Flow, Planner, etc. I wouldn't call it a chat app.

With all of the above said, and considering Microsoft making the change from Skype to Teams, anyone who is "looking" into using Skype in the next 12 months to 2 years (9%) knows nothing about what's going on.

 

[JamesShines]

Our outfit is pushing Teams upon us. Slack was pushed out. Hip hat is going soon. If they were surveyed they would declare for MS Teams, but it is not liked and only used because the company pushes it and they only do so because it is free, not for any quality or feature set. Articles like this are poor because they only speak to the market and not to the technology and the user needs and preferences.