This is among the most significant partnerships Slack has organized yet. The relatively nascent start-up has made a big splash since it launched in 2013. Since then, the chat software has positioned itself as a leading enterprise solution. Slack now competes directly with Microsoft Teams and Facebook. The company believes potential partners are seeking out Slack before its rivals: “As you see all these large enterprise software companies looking at messaging as a major platform, they’re looking to partner with us first and foremost,” says Brad Armstrong, Slack’s head of global business and corporate development. Workers will now be able to access Slack for Oracle’s sales, business, and human resources software. For example, employees can ask “how many vacation days do I have left this year?” and get responses from an Oracle-built chatbot. “I call this the next browser,” says Suhas Uliyar, Oracle’s vice president of bots and AI. “This is just the natural way in how you converse.” The company says it tied with Oracle to make its messaging platform more attractive to large organizations. The market is becoming increasingly competitive market which Slack entered with an enterprise-grade version of its service in January.
Partnership Development
Oracle wants to engage with younger professionals, who are increasingly using workplace chat to communicate. “We need to make sure we’re embracing the way the world is changing and embracing the way that people are working,” Uliyar said. Oracle is already a significant customer of Slack’s The company has 30,000 employees who were already using the chat platform in work. The new chatbots will begin to roll out before the end of the first quarter, 2018.
