Microsoft is still not giving up on building an enterprise messaging service and has launched Microsoft Teams. The Redmond-headquartered company will now be taking on newer services like Slack and Facebook's Workplace. Slack, on its part, has issued a full page ad and said that it was "genuinely happy to have competition" in the space. Remember, Microsoft had bought Yammer for $1.2 billion in 2012. Yammer was a closed social network for enterprises. At the time of acquisition, Microsoft said it would continue to invest in developing Yammer’s standalone product and over time, users can expect integrations to Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype. It seems that the company made good on that promise and Microsoft said that Teams was built ground up on the Office 365 global, secure cloud. "Team conversations are, by default, visible to the entire team, but there is of course the ability for private discussions. Skype is deeply integrated, so teams can participate in voice and video conferences," the company added in its blog. Yammer is also integrated for sharing posts in Teams. The New York Times points out that CEO Satya Nadella's priority will be to work on needs of Office 365 users and that Teams is poised for the same. In a recent call with analysts, Nadella said that the monthly active users for Office 365 commercial are now over 85 million, a 40% growth year-on-year. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI and Delve are all built into Microsoft Teams. The…
