AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 10, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Spiceworks today announced the results of a new survey examining the adoption and perceptions of collaborative chat applications in businesses across North America and Europe. The results show that while Skype for Business continues to hold the number one spot with 44 percent of businesses currently using it, Microsoft Teams has secured the number two spot just two years after launch. In Spiceworks' 2016 business chat app report, 20 percent of organizations expected to use Microsoft Teams by 2018, and those adoption plans held true. Today, 21 percent of businesses are using Microsoft Teams, up from 3 percent in 2016, and 15 percent of businesses are using Slack, up from 13 percent in 2016.

Microsoft Teams is also expected to see the most growth in the next two years. By the end of 2020, 53 percent of businesses plan to use Skype for Business, 41 percent plan to use Microsoft Teams, 18 percent plan to use Slack, and 12 percent plan to use Google Hangouts. Only 1 percent of organizations plan to use Workplace by Facebook by 2020.

"The sudden rise of Microsoft Teams is likely influenced by the fact that it's available at no additional cost to Office 365 users," said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. "Although Skype for Business has maintained the lead overall, Microsoft is putting more of an emphasis on Microsoft Teams as the default communications app for Office 365, which is enticing organizations to give it a try. As a result, we'll likely see Teams adoption rates double in the next couple years."

However, adoption rates vary by company size. Currently, small businesses with less than 100 employees are slightly more likely to use Slack than their larger counterparts: 17 percent of small businesses use Slack compared to 13 percent of large businesses with more than 500 employees. Conversely, large businesses are more likely to use Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts: 25 percent of large businesses use Teams and 18 percent use Hangouts, compared to 17 percent and 8 percent of small businesses, respectively.

Slack considered most innovative; Teams considered most secure

When IT professionals who have deployed chat apps in their organizations were asked to rank them across different attributes, they ranked Slack as the leader when it comes to innovation. Conversely, Teams is the perceived leader for security, manageability, and cost-effectiveness, and Skype for Business is the perceived leader for reliability, compatibility, and user-friendliness. In fact, twice as many IT professionals believe Skype for Business is user-friendly compared to Microsoft Teams. Behind Skype for Business, Slack ranked second as the most user-friendly chat app, followed by Google Hangouts and then Microsoft Teams

Business chat apps increasingly viewed as supplemental to email, rather than a replacement

Although email is still the primary communications tool in the workplace, adoption of chat apps has increased overall in the last two years. Currently, 62 percent of organizations have deployed one or more chat apps, compared to 42 percent in 2016. However, the findings indicate IT professionals increasingly view collaborative chat apps as supplemental to email, rather than a replacement. Only 16 percent of IT professionals believe collaborative chat apps will replace email within the next 3 to 5 years, compared to 25 percent who believed this in 2016.

Cost may be a factor considering only 30 percent of IT professionals believe chat apps are less expensive than email. Additionally, 37 percent of IT professionals believe chat apps put corporate data at greater risk, up slightly from 32 percent in 2016. A quarter of IT professionals also reported that employees at their organization often use chat apps that have not been approved by IT. However, regardless of cost or security concerns, more than half of IT professionals believe collaborative chat apps are critical to their organization's success.

Methodology    
The survey was conducted in November 2018 and included 901 respondents from organizations across North America and EMEA. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes, including small-to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents come from a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, government, and finance. For more information and a complete list of survey results, visit https://community.spiceworks.com/blog/3157-business-chat-apps-in-2018-top-players-and-adoption-plans.  

About Spiceworks    
Spiceworks is the marketplace that connects the IT industry to help technology buyers and sellers get their jobs done, every day. The company helps people in the world's businesses find, adopt, and manage the latest technologies while also helping IT brands build, market, and support better products and services. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Spiceworks empowers people to use technology to make their organizations, their communities, and the world better. For more information, visit http://www.spiceworks.com.  

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Media Contact:   
Risa Kleen   
Spiceworks   
press@spiceworks.com 

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