Slack to acquire HipChat and Stride – then shut them down

Slack continues to dominate the world of workplace chat apps. The cloud-based platform is set to acquire rival Atlassian's HipChat and Stride assets, chief executives from both companies have said.

Launched back in 2014, millions of people around the world use Slack to connect their teams and the app is often a crucial aspect of communications. The platform has continued to grow at a rapid pace - much faster than its competition.

A series of tweets from Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield announced the acquisition. Butterfield said that Slack is purchasing the IP for HipChat and Stride in an effort to “better support those users who choose to migrate” to its application.

Joff Redfern, Atlassian's VP of Product Management, confirmed the discontinuation in a blog post. He insisted that the market in real-time communications has “changed pretty dramatically” over the past year, but “one product has continued to stand out from the others: Slack.”

“While we've made great early progress with Stride, we believe the best way forward for our customers and for Atlassian is to enter into a strategic partnership with Slack and no longer offer our own real-time communications products,” he added.

Butterfield disclosed that Atlassian will offer a “small but symbolically important investment” in Slack. Redfern reiterated this, and said “Atlassian has made an equity investment in Slack, and Slack has acquired the IP for Stride and Hipchat Cloud, both of which we will discontinue.”

While Slack isn't perfect, the platform continues to innovate. Last month, Slack announced a major update to its search tool which claims to make finding critical information more intuitive, and faster.

Back in April, EM360 ranked Slack as the top tech startup of 2018. This was well founded - the platform is currently recognised as the fastest-growing enterprise and work chat app.

Robbie O'Connor, Asana's Head of EMEA business, recently told EM360 that effective and productive teams require apps like Slack to communicate effectively. It looks like Slack will continue to thrive, especially now the competition pool has reduced significantly.