- General
- June 23, 2019
- 5 minutes read
Microsoft Bars Slack Use By Employees
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella image: Microsoft According to an internal Microsoft memo obtained by GeekWire, the Redmond-based software giant has prohibited…
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| Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
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According to an internal Microsoft memo obtained by GeekWire, the Redmond-based software giant has prohibited the use of the free version of Slack for its over 100,000 employees. The decision isn’t mainly driven by Microsoft’s Slack-competing Teams product (although the obtained memo vouched for “use of Microsoft Teams rather than a competitive software”), but is reportedly driven by security concerns for Microsoft’s intellectual property.
Slack isn’t alone on a “prohibited” category of products for Microsoft employees. Other tools like the popular Grammarly grammar checker and Kaspersky security software are also barred from use by employees. Likewise, services like Google Docs, PagerDuty, Amazon Web Services and even the cloud version of GitHub — which Microsoft acquired for $7.5 billion last year — are also placed on a “discouraged” category.
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| Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott
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GeekWire said it first “picked up on rumblings of the prohibition” from Microsoft employees, before tracking down and obtaining the [prohibited] list and verifying its authenticity. Slack just went public via a direct listing that reaped big wins for investors. The company’s prior IPO filing listed Microsoft as its “primary competitor”, following suit from Microsoft’s official addition of Slack as a competitor in its 2018 10-K report.
Slack kicked off a next chapter of Microsoft rivalry by its debut on the public markets. The company’s stock jumped more than 50% in early trading, eclipsing a $20 billion vauation on the New York Stock Exchange.
