Originally published in The New Stack Update.
Among developers, Slack — along with Atlassian HipChat, Gitter and others — have captured mindshare for ChatOps. However, when Spiceworks surveyed 448 IT pros in December 2016 about collaborative chat applications, Skype for Business and Google Hangouts are used more often than Slack. In fact, among enterprises, 50 percent of IT pros are using Skype. The survey also found that 14 percent expect to be using Microsoft Teams within the next twelve months. The naysayers will claim that Skype and Teams are bundled with other Microsoft products, but that does not mean they are not being used. Of course, the capabilities of all these tools are dramatically different. However, with Workplace by Facebook in the mix, Slack will need to more than make developers happy to get traction within enterprises.
