When Microsoft Teams arrived in 2016 and rolled out officially in March 2017, the workplace collaboration platform landed with a bang. With the power of Office 365 behind it, Teams provided an instant challenge to big rivals such as Slack. Since launch, Teams has gone from strength to strength.
Indeed, IT pro community Spiceworks says Microsoft Teams has enjoyed a flurry of success, especially during 2018.
Back when Teams launched, Slack saw the threat and took out a full-page ad in the New York Times essentially telling Microsoft to back off. Redmond did not and since launching Teams has been boosting the service's features.
The biggest change to Microsoft Teams happened six months ago. Microsoft introduced a free version of the service, a decision that had paid off. Spiceworks says adoption has soared since that introduction. Indeed, Teams was used by 329,000 companies in September, up from 200,000 in May.
Microsoft already knows Teams is thriving. Just recently, the company said the service is its fastest ever-growing business application.
To gather its data, Spiceworks surveyed 900 organizations in the United States and Europe. The firm found Teams has overtake Slack as the second most used business chat app. Only Microsoft's own Skype for Business is above Teams in terms of users.
Microsoft Dominance
You may remember we once discussed the possibility of Microsoft being able to truly dominate the workplace chat market. It seems the company is well on its way to that situation. In fact, Skype for Business is in the process of being folded into Microsoft Teams to create a unified singular experience.
“By the end of 2020, 41 percent of organizations expect to use Microsoft Teams (up from 21 percent in 2016), and 18 percent expect to use Slack (up slightly from 15 percent in 2018),” writes Spiceworks.
“In other words, if these adoption plans hold true, we can expect Microsoft Teams adoption rates to be twice as high as Slack's two years from now.”
Spiceworks says Teams is now used by 21 percent of organizations asked. While Slack has been concerned by Microsoft's presence, the company has also continued to grow. The survey finds Slack has a 15 percent share, up 2 percent from 2016.
