Microsoft Teams is about to arrive on Office 365

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Microsoft Teams, the software giant’s answer to Slack, is going to be released to Office 365 users across the globe next week.

To be precise, the service will be made available on Tuesday, complete with an online launch event hosted by Corporate VP Kirk Koenigsbauer, who will talk about exactly what Teams can do for businesses out there; and hopefully we’ll see some new tricks into the bargain.

Teams has taken a little longer to get to us than expected. Last autumn, when we first discovered Microsoft’s plans for a serious Slack-alike, it was thought that the full product would launch in January – but we’ve had to wait a couple of months more.

As ever with a product launch though, it’s obviously better to make sure the thing is ready and will impress upon release, rather than pushing something out the door as soon as possible. It’s not like there was any great rush, anyway.

Integration and collaboration

A big part of the attraction of Teams will be full integration across Office 365’s range of existing apps and services, enabling more powerful collaboration all-round. Microsoft Teams is expected to be made available to commercial customers running Office 365 business or enterprise flavours.

Unlike Slack, there won’t be a more limited freebie offering for smaller outfits to benefit from, so Microsoft’s product won’t be a direct competitor in that respect. But it will be a sizeable carrot to try and tempt businesses to take the plunge with Office 365.

• Maybe you’ll run Teams on one of our 10 best business laptops