“For Microsoft, teams are increasingly working on the Internet,” says Wayne Kurzman, an analyst at IDC, a technology research firm. “This is becoming a platform for Microsoft.”
Slack complains that the use of collaboration technologies is growing rapidly. Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom are in huge demand due to outages caused by the coronavirus, which force most of the workforce to work from home.
In April, when the company announced its quarterly financial results, Microsoft said teams had 75 million daily users, more than double the number in early March. At the time, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said, “In two months, we saw a digital transformation in two years.”
Microsoft said Wednesday that in the three months ended June, revenue was $ 38 billion, up 13 percent. Operating income rose 8% to $ 13.4 billion, or $ 1.46 per share. The company’s sales and earnings per share beat Wall Street estimates.
Slack, founded in 2014, has grown rapidly this year. Last month, reporting results for its quarter ending in April, Slack said its revenue jumped 50 percent to $ 202 million. It has over 122,000 paying customers, usually companies with annual licenses, up 28% from a year earlier.
Mr. Schellhaz, General Counsel for Slack, said, “Microsoft is returning to the past.”
But the illegal linking lawsuit that Slack is making in his complaint has not been resolved in the federal browser case. It found that Microsoft used a number of illegal tactics to thwart competition, with contract restrictions and threats. The appellate court granted these claims but sent the claim to a lower court for reconsideration. The Clinton administration’s case was settled early in the Bush administration.
Slack argues that the merger of Teams with Office is “a clear violation of European law,” said Mr Prince, the company’s vice president of policy.
Google announced last week that he has more tightly integrated video, chat and email into his GSuite product suite. But the difference, Slack says, is that Google is not the dominant business software company like Microsoft.