Microsoft’s reach is not a threat

Microsoft is likely to be the first competitor for Slack, however the widespread adoption of Microsoft’s software program is not a main drawback for Stewart Butterfield, co-founder and CEO of the messaging app.

Microsoft’s Teams service, nevertheless, is a direct competitor to Slack’s messaging platform.

As a element of the Office 365 productiveness app bundle, the Teams app is a hallmark of Microsoft’s Commercial Cloud class that traders scrutinize to trace its transition from licenses to subscriptions. Office merchandise and cloud companies symbolize a quarter of all income for Microsoft — the world’s Most worthy public firm.

Last week, Microsoft stated Teams had extra every day lively customers than Slack. One government additionally recommended that the corporate’s person base may develop additional, because the variety of month-to-month lively customers of Office 365 for industrial use has reached 180 million.

“If it’s based on the bigger distribution, I don’t think that’s really a threat,” Butterfield stated Monday on the Fortune Brainstorm Tech convention in Aspen, Colorado.

Butterfield’s view attracts on Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s idea of disruptive innovation. Butterfield stated that if a smaller firm’s product resonates with prospects, it may make inroads towards a agency that does many extra issues.

He pointed to Microsoft’s push to compete with Google within the web search market, after it had change into dominant in working techniques with Windows.

“Tens of billions of dollars into that [search engine] and I don’t know what their market share is now — 9% or something like that,” Butterfield informed Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky. NetMarketShare put Micorsoft’s search engine Bing at 8.6% on desktops and laptops for the month of June.

Butterfield additionally cited Google’s efforts to popularize its Google+ social community following the rise of Facebook, together with by taking part in it up in Gmail and requiring individuals to make use of it to be able to go away feedback on YouTube movies.

Exposing Google+ to so many individuals did not in the end make a distinction, Butterfield stated, and Google shut down the patron product earlier this yr.

“I think that it’s harder and harder, not because there’s anything wrong with Microsoft, because it’s hard for us at this point, given the size that we’re at — it’s hard to maintain a real focus on quality, on user experience, and the bigger you get, the harder it is,” stated Slack’s CEO. “So if the competition was based on the quality of user experience, and that’s where all the effort is, that would probably be more daunting for us.”

Butterfield stated Microsoft is an unimaginable firm and that it has been a good accomplice to work with — Slack just lately got here out with a calendar integration for Office 365. Microsoft reportedly as soon as tried to purchase Slack however ended up backing away.

“Whatever Microsoft does, we’re nonetheless going…