Microsoft Teams is killing it in the business chat market

Microsoft's move six months ago to offer a free version of Teams to rival Slack has led to skyrocketing adoption, according to a survey by Spiceworks.

That's likely to be no surprise to Microsoft, which recently crowned Teams its "fastest-growing business app" ever. The app was used by 329,000 organizations worldwide in September, up from 200,000 in May, it revealed in September.

The Spiceworks survey of 900 businesses in Europe and the US has found that Teams is now the second most widely used chat app, following Microsoft's Skype for Business.

Microsoft unveiled the business chat app in November 2016. According to Spiceworks, Teams adoption has grown from three percent of organizations in a 2016 to 21 percent today.

Slack, which defined the space, has also grown but only has a 15 percent share of businesses, up from 13 percent in 2016.

As Spiceworks notes, the rapid ascent of Teams is probably due to its being a free add-on for Office 365, the dominant productivity suite in the enterprise.

Google Hangouts share has fallen from 16 percent in 2017 to 11 percent of businesses today. Facebook's Workplace is doing even worse, with only one percent of organizations using it for office collaboration.

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However, according to Spiceworks' data, adoption of Google Hangouts among large business is up from 11 percent in 2016 to 18 percent today. Spiceworks speculates that Hangouts video-conferencing functionality is encouraging greater adoption, while G Suite customers are also lifting numbers.

Skype for Business by far remains the leader, currently used by 44 percent of organizations, up from 36 percent two years ago. However, that's likely to change in future given Microsoft's push to transition Skype for Business users to Teams.

The shift to Microsoft Teams is also reflected in respondents' expectations about what business chat apps they'll be using in two years' time.

"By the end of 2020, 41 percent of organizations expect to use Microsoft Teams (up from 21 percent in 2016), and 18 percent expect to use Slack (up slightly from 15 percent in 2018)," writes Spiceworks.

"In other words, if these adoption plans hold true, we can expect Microsoft Teams adoption rates to be twice as high as Slack's two years from now."

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