Microsoft has banned its employees from using Slack Free, Slack Standard, and Slack Plus, and is discouraging them from using services like Google Docs, and even AWS. The report comes from The Verge, which cites the company’s reasoning for banning Slack as “Slack Free, Slack Standard and Slack Plus versions do not provide required controls to properly protect Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP)”
Microsoft’s decisions make sense when you consider the security and Intellectual Property concerns raised by the company, but there’s also the fact that Microsoft has been competing very aggressively against Slack, and to continue competing against it, it will have to allow its employees to use the app. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for Microsoft, since Slack and Google Docs are two of the most popularly used services for team communication and collaboration.
