Slack launches Enterprise Grid

Slack, the tech unicorn and fastest growing SaaS company in history, has launched Slack Enterprise Grid, a brand new platform built for large, complex organisations with 500-500,000 users.

Slack Enterprise Grid empowers the design, usage and administration of multiple, interconnected Slack workspaces and can be deployed across any large, global organisation, with dozens of companies such as PayPal, Capital One and IBM already using it.

This isn’t just an incremental change, but a fresh approach to accelerate enterprise productivity at scale and impact the future of work. Slack Enterprise Grid empowers the workforce by eliminating mundane tasks and transforming workflows to enable people to get more done in a simpler, pleasant way. Key features include the ability to manage Slack at scale, unlimited workspaces, identity management, and advanced security.

Slack Enterprise Grid features include:

• Managing Slack at Scale: The ability to handle user accounts, user groups, and direct messaging across the entire organization. With grid-level identity, users sign in to Slack once and are given access to all their workspaces with one set of direct message conversations.

• Unlimited Workspaces: It comes with an unlimited number of workspaces, along with the ability to create any number of shared channels between these teams, giving enormous flexibility to create communication structures which mirror each organization’s particular ways of working.

• Identity Management: It integrates with identity providers and identity management systems to securely provision and manage any number of users.

• Security / Compliance: It offers advanced interfaces for management of security, policy, compliance, and integration-related functionality at the Grid level, including e-discovery and digital loss prevention systems. Optional overrides from organization defaults at the level of particular teams give additional flexibility. This includes a preexisting list of certifications, including CSA STAR: Level 1, SOC 2: Type II and Type II, SOC 3, and EU/US Privacy Shield.

• HIPAA & FINRA: Slack has achieved compliance with HIPAA & FINRA obligations and standards, for the first time, giving the two most highly regulated industries access to the communication platform where work happens. Effective immediately on Enterprise Grid,  healthcare companies can keep their patient information safe and secure, and financial services companies can work better within the regulated confines of their industry.

• Data loss prevention (DLP)and eDiscovery and supporting partnerships: It integrates with Data Loss Prevention and e-Discovery providers including PaloAlto Networks, Bloomberg Vault, Skyhigh, Netskope, Relativity by KCura, Smarsh and more. This allows enterprises to further control the security and compliance of their most sensitive data.

• Data encryption: This already exists in Slack’s current product, and we will continue have data encryption in transit and at rest, SCIM provisioning, SAML-based SSO. Slack adheres to the most stringent standards that enterprises expect around encryption, access and authorization. Enterprises can feel confident that access to their Slack data is secure and protected with the latest technical controls.

As well as this launch, Slack has also announced the following:

New Large Enterprise Customers, including Capital One, PayPal and IBM

Platform Partnerships and Integrations:
In addition to existing partnerships with Salesforce, IBM and Google, Slack is announcing a partnership with SAP.

As part of this partnership, SAP is building a portfolio of bots designed for Slack to empower its over 345,000 enterprise customers and 2.5M global developer community, as well as a Slack Plugin for SAP Web IDE. The first bots are:

• Concur: a bot to bring travel and expense management into a conversational interfaces. Customers will be able to interact with the Concur platform through a conversational interface, allowing them to request information about their business travel plans and submit expenses without interrupting their work in Slack.
• SAP SuccessFactors: a bot to bring HR into a conversational interface, starting with its continuous performance management capabilities. Employees will be able to create and review activities and achievements; managers will be able to provide feedback on those actions – all without having to break from the work they’re already doing in Slack.

SAP HANA Cloud platform: SAP has launched the Slack Plugin for SAP Web IDE, which enables developers to consume selected Slack channels within Web IDE and conduct real time discussions while working on joint projects. It also enables a “push” into the HCP Git, done via Web IDE, to generate events into a specified Slack channel.

Slack is also showcasing some new Search, Learning and Intelligence (SLI) features:

With SLI, Slack is tackling one of the most urgent challenges facing enterprises today: information overload. Slack is previewing a new set of features to address this issue, including:

• Universal Search: delivers not just messages, but relevant results across all types of information, including people on your team identified as experts on the topic, channels where the topic is frequently discussed, and related files, all in a single set of results
• Faceted Search: new, intelligent ways to quickly filter and refine your searches to narrow your results and find exactly what you’re looking for.
• Prioritized Reading: personalized channels and conversation sorting woven throughout Slack
• Channel Highlights: highlight key messages within and across channels, making it fast to catch up
• Daily Briefings: a single, streamlined view of your most important and relevant messages across your channels, so you can quickly catch up and stay up to date on the most important things in Slack