Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a multi-year partnership with Slack on Thursday, which will see Slack leverage Amazon’s infrastructure for its audio, video and screen-sharing services. In addition, Slack will allow users to manage AWS resources from within their app, lowering the barrier to adoption for integrating cloud services. AWS has also agreed to adopt Slack for internal communications.

Amazon stock prices have seen a sharp increase from USD 1,676.61 in mid-March to USD 2307.68 in mid-April, with a high of USD 2,507.54 today, marking the rapid shift towards online retail that the coronavirus pandemic has caused. Similarly, stock prices for Slack have increased from USD 17.04 in mid-March, peaking at a high of USD 40.07 today, reflecting the rise of remote working and increased dependence on online collaboration tools. Investors are optimistic that flexible working will continue, despite lockdowns lifting, according to The Motley Fool.

“The future of enterprise software will be driven by the combination of cloud services and workstream collaboration tools,” stated Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder of Slack, in a press release. “Strategically partnering with AWS allows both companies to scale to meet demand and deliver enterprise-grade offerings to our customers.”

However, Slack faces stiff competition from industry giants including Microsoft Teams and Zoom, the latter of which has come under heavy criticism for a history of security vulnerabilities. Having gone public in April 2019, it is currently “deeply unprofitable” according to Nasdaq, reporting a net loss of USD 571.1 million in 2020 – a 281% increase from their net loss of USD 149.7 million in 2019. Its most recent financial reports, released on 4 June, fell short of investor expectations, according to TechCrunch, despite revealing a total revenue of USD 201.7 million for the quarter, a 50% year-on-year increase.

Although remote working is predicted to increase, with major companies such as Twitter announcing that staff can work from home indefinitely, it remains to see which companies will emerge as the front-runners of online collaboration tools.

 

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