Salesforce.com Inc.’s CRM, -3.81% acquisition of Slack Technologies Inc. WORK, +25.32% would be a major challenge to Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -0.14%, one analyst said Wednesday, following a report of a possible deal in the works, and may set off a wave of software acquisitions. “This deal would be a major shot across the bow at Microsoft with the company’s Teams offering a direct messaging competitor against Slack that has been a clear hurdle to growth and now would be a two horse race between Microsoft and Salesforce,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note Wednesday. Microsoft already butts heads with Salesforce, which specializes in customer relationship management software, with its Dynamics 365 CRM service. Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack could also set off a string of software company acquisitions across the tech industry well into next year, Ives said. “This would also have a ripple impact for Google GOOG, +0.39% GOOGL, +0.18% and its cloud endeavors and put more pressure on [Google Cloud CEO Thomas] Kurian and GCP to do a collaborative cloud deal over the next 3 to 6 months to keep pace with the likes of Amazon AMZN, +1.65%, Microsoft, and Salesforce.” Slack shares were last up more than 23%, while Salesforce shares were down about 3%. Slack shares closed Tuesday at $29.58 giving the company a market cap of $16.89 billion. The report was not the only shake-up in the cloud industry Wednesday as Amazon’s AWS public cloud service was experiencing a major outage, grounding many online services that depend on it.
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