(Slack Image)

Popular messaging service Slack has entered the big leagues. The company launched a service catering to large corporations on Tuesday.

With Enterprise Grid, Slack took a new approach by allowing companies to connect multiple workspaces under a single network. It also provides more security than before, and allows companies to adjust data security features across workspaces.

When it launched in 2013, Slack was initially intended for smaller teams. Small companies could easily get by with one workspace and separate channels, but companies over a few hundred employees strained the platform. The new Enterprise Grid platform caters to companies with thousands of employees.

Slack is also partnering with SAP to create bots integrating the software company’s services into the Enterprise Grid platform. The first bots will also connect users to the Concur travel and expense network, the Successfactors performance management system and the HANA Cloud platform.

Slack’s launch into corporate products comes as the company is feeling the heat from competitors including Microsoft Teams. On Monday, the day before Slack’s Enterprise Grid launch, Microsoft announced its Teams workplace had been used by 30,000 organizations in the last month alone.

Slack countered Tuesday, revealing it now has 5 million daily users, with 1.5 million of them being paid subscribers.

The companies have been in a close race since Microsoft Teams launched last November. While Slack has had more buzz among companies, Teams has integrated other Microsoft services, such as the Office 365 suite, from the beginning.

Yesterday’s pre-emptive announcement on Teams’ successes follows an approach Slack’s full-page “Dear Microsoft” ad in The New York Times ahead of the Microsoft Teams launch. It definitely got less hype though, which continues to be Slack’s strength in the market.

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