This is really terrible. Since nobody's name is actually on it, I assume their marketing team wrote it.
I understand that Slack's valuation is based in part on the idea that they can convert large portions of the enterprise market, and that Microsoft has a pretty great track record of burning that market down. It makes sense that they'd want to write something to maintain their claim on the enterprise market.
But this piece can't decide who it's talking to, and so it's probably pretty cringe-y to everyone.
Microsoft already has the beachhead into the enterprise, with their Office 365 offerings. We're seeing most of our Fortune 500 customers move their email, at least, to Office 365, and almost none of the smaller businesses go through the hassle of managing their own Exchange infrastructure.
Once they are on Office 365 for email and Office, they basically get Skype, Yammer, and all the other things thrown in for free. I'm sure that this will fold into that same pattern, assuming it's, say, 75% as good as Slack.
I work in a Fortune 500 company, our CTO has already announced on Yammer that we will evaluate Microsoft Teams, because anyway, it is included in the Office 365 package. So yes, the bundling strategy seems to work.
I understand that Slack's valuation is based in part on the idea that they can convert large portions of the enterprise market, and that Microsoft has a pretty great track record of burning that market down. It makes sense that they'd want to write something to maintain their claim on the enterprise market.
But this piece can't decide who it's talking to, and so it's probably pretty cringe-y to everyone.