And, including free users, more than 9 million people were logging into Slack each week. Slack fired back a day later with far more specific figures: 50,000 teams, and a total of 2 million users, were paying for its service, the company said.

More than 125,000 organizations are using Teams, Microsoft said earlier this month. Microsoft's answer to Slack - Teams - is gaining traction, the company says. When reportedly was looking at an acquisition of Slack earlier this year, Bloomberg News said the company could be valued at $9 billion. Slack's easy-to-use software, and its free tier for people to experiment with, has made the company one of the hottest business-technology startups. The software, which allows business users to set up chat windows between individual co-workers as well as groups, was introduced a year ago and aimed squarely at the success of San Francisco based Slack Technologies. (The consumer version of Skype, which got a Snapchat-like face-lift earlier this year, will continue to operate under its own name.)īut the move shows the growing importance of Teams at Microsoft. Skype's technology backbone will still route customers calls through the web in Teams. The company, based outside Seattle, didn't set a date for the changeover. Skype for Business, the company's voice and video-chat software, will be replaced in Microsoft's Office 365 bundle by Teams, Microsoft said Monday at Ignite, its annual conference for business-technology buyers.

Who owns skype 2017