Salesforce gets some Slack

MARC BENIOFF got the idea for the “ohana” corporate culture on a sabbatical in Hawaii. The term refers to a network of families bound together. He likes to think of Salesforce, the world’s third-biggest software firm, which he founded and runs, as just such a network. On December 1st Mr Benioff welcomed Slack, an instant-messaging tool, to his ohana. The $27.7bn deal is one of the biggest ever in the software industry.Like many family alliances the tie-up is partly about power and feuds. Slack’s product has a cultlike following, which Salesforce wants to harness to build a tech platform that sells digital tools that no firm can do without. Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s co-founder, hailed it (hyperbolically) as “the most strategic combination in the history of software”. The feud is with Microsoft, whose advances Slack spurned four years ago. The deal makes Salesforce a far more formidable challenger to the giant.