Slack Technologies (NYSE:WORK) recently unveiled a communication solution called “Slack Connect” for cross-organization communication. The product dubbed an email killer can connect up to 20 organizations that can share information through Slack channels.
Surge in teleworking boosting adoption of Slack Connect
With remote working becoming a norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations resorted to a virtual meeting. As a result, solutions such as Slack Connect, Microsoft Corp’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Teams, and Zoom Video Communications’ (NASDAQ:ZM) Zoom Video meeting have seen an upsurge of users. With Slack Connect, companies can link up and communicate faster than the back and forth of emails.
Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, indicated that Slack Connect saw a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic that not even Microsoft Teams could match it. There are challenges with this idea for Slack, and over the years, they have been working to mitigate it. The complications are around the different security requirements and protocols of different organizations for communication data storage. For instance, a bank, law firm, and a start-up will have different requirements and protocols.
Slack has been rehashing its infrastructure following a recent outage
The company indicates that it will have to rework its infrastructure to enable different organizations meet their standards while at the same time maintaining seamless communication. Similarly, Slack had to redesign its interface to make it easier to communicate outside an organization and access the conversations. Also, the company is working on linking the organization’s calendars. The Google and Outlook calendar integration will enable company suggest the best meeting times available.
On May 12, 2020, Slack experienced outages for hours due to the surge in teleworking. Slack engineers were forced to turn to Zoom Video Meeting to conduct a recovery. Slack organized the meeting through its company-wide email, a medium that Slack Connect is supposedly replacing. Senior engineering manager, Ryan Katkov, stated that engineers from various teams joined the Zoom meeting, where they shared opinions and solutions to correct the glitch in Slack Connect.
