> Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Yes. The main alternative I've seen at a couple largish corporations is Microsoft commun

> Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Yes. The main alternative I've seen at a couple largish corporations is Microsoft communicator/lync. Lync has some good video/screensharing stuff, but slack is more reliable and provides a great search history feature, which is the killer feature IMO. Also, the mac client is much less buggy than what MS offers. I know these sound like tiny features, but Slack is there when you need it and stays out of your way when you don't, which is priceless when you're trying to get stuff done. Communicator always had a knack for crashing when I was trying to search history or in the middle of a chat. For those saying IRC is a good alternative, I've yet to see a deployment as useful and easy to use as Slack. Obviously IRC is cheaper, but I doubt most bigcorps are too price sensitive for messaging systems.