Enterprise Communicationsatlassianslack

The Fallen: Hipchat and Stride

by Dave Michels

Atlassian figured out that it missed its opportunity with Workstream Collaboration.  It agreed to “sell” its assets to competitor Slack and will “buy” an equity position in Slack. 

Here’s my TalkingPointz:

  1. No idea who ends up paying who in this deal. Slack is paying Atlassian for HipChat and Stride (and will get the revenue from its paying customers), and Atlassian is “buying” an equity position in Slack that the Slack CEO described as “nominal.”
  2. Atlassian stock price is up 18% in after hours trading and expected to stay up tomorrow. Also today Atlassian reported a wider than expected loss of $26 M for Q4. So the company is losing more money than expected, and sold its team collab apps for an undisclosed sum, and the stock takes off. #GoFigure
  3. HipChat was among the few pioneering apps in this new workstream space. Atlassian ignored it, then rebuilt it (as Stride) — basically failed twice.
  4. I suspect Slack has little interest in HipChat or Stride other than seeing them disappear.
  5. Slack, HipChat, Stride, and Workplace by Facebook are all workstream collaboration apps that don’t get UC. Capture all of your conversations, meetings, and content in one place – except calls.
  6. Microsoft, RingCentral, Cisco, Avaya, Unify, and as of this month Vonage, Google, and 8×8 are all part of a group that understands that sometimes conversations occur over telephony,
  7. The inclusion of telephony (and conferencing) moves the purchase decision from LoB mangers buying an app to IT. It becomes an enterprise-wide decision that requires a sophisticated GTM, sales team, and channel.
  8. I’ve been expecting Atlassian to exit collaboration, but I’m disappointed it didn’t go to a UC/UCaaS vendor/provider that needed it and would have invested in it.
  9. With Atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed, it’s going to be tough for smaller firms to get their message across: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Cisco are telling CIOs that they each have the best solutions and sometimes they are free. Atlassian didn’t have a chance, questionable if Slack does.

Bonus: The opening of point 9 is a reference to?