While Slack just made a successful debut onto the stock market, news has surfaced that Microsoft actively bans the use of Slack for its employees, as reported by GeekWire. They have also obtained a document that outlines “prohibited and discouraged” software and technology.
While Microsoft’s Teams is Slack’s foremost competitor in terms of collaborative chat software, it seems competition isn’t the only reason for the ban. Or at least, that’s not how Microsoft is framing it. While Microsoft does mention the competitive nature of Slack, it also cites a security concern.
“Slack Free, Slack Standard and Slack Plus versions do not provide required controls to properly protect Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP). Existing users of these solutions should migrate chat history and files related to Microsoft business to Microsoft Teams, which offers the same features and integrated Office 365 apps, calling and meeting functionality. Learn more about the additional features that Teams can provide your workgroup. Slack Enterprise Grid version complies with Microsoft security requirements; however, we encourage use of Microsoft Teams rather than a competitive software.”
That means employees can use Slack Enterprise Grid, but given the costs involved it’s far more likely that most groups in Microsoft will be using the preferred Microsoft Teams option. AWS and Google Docs usage will reportedly “require a business justification” for employee use, and even Microsoft-owned GitHub is discouraged for “Highly Confidential types of information, specs or code.”
Microsoft has also banned Grammarly inside the company, which is a writing and grammar-checking app that can monitor every keystroke. “The Grammarly Office add-in and browser extensions should not be used on the Microsoft network because they are able to access Information Rights Management (IRM) protected content within emails and documents,” according to the leaked list.
Microsoft’s prohibited list makes a lot of sense for security-related matters, but employees still need to use these competing services to further their own products and understand the broader market. That would be a key part of any business justifications to get access to services like AWS or Google Docs.
Slack and Microsoft have been battling it out since 2017, and in April, Slack recognized Microsoft as its primary competitor.
Microsoft also launched a free version of Teams that includes unlimited messages and search to better compete with Slack.
