INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
HipChat, the workplace chat app that held the throne before Slack was Slack, is being discontinued
Also being discontinued is Atlassian own would-be HipChat replacement, Stride.
News of the discontinuation comes first not from Atlassian,
but instead from a somewhat surprising source: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield
In a series of tweets, Butterfield says that Slack is purchasing the IP for both products to &better support those users who choose to
migrate& to its platform.
Butterfield also notes that Atlassian will be making a &small but symbolically important investment& in Slack —
likely a good move, given that rumors of a Slack IPO have been swirling (though Butterfield says it won''t happen this year)
Getting a pre-IPO investment into Slack might end up paying off for Atlassian better than trying to continue competing.
The deal we&re
announcing today with Atlassian is pretty amazing
Indeed, I tried to fit it all in one (280 character) tweet but I just couldn''t do it
So, I&ll lay it out in a few
But first, I wanted to thank Scott, Mike, Jay and the team: incredible to work with you.
mdash; Stewart Butterfield (@stewart) July 26,
2018
Details: • Atlassian is discontinuing Hipchat/Stride • Slack is purchasing the IP to better support those users who choose to
migrate • We&re both working closely together to make sure that as simple and painless a process as possible …
mdash; Stewart
Butterfield (@stewart) July 26, 2018
Atlassian VP of Product Management, Joff Redfern, confirmed the news in a blog post, calling it the
&best way forward& for its existing customers
It about as real of an example of &if you can''t beat &em, join &em& as you can get; even Atlassian own employees will be moved over to
using Slack.
According to an FAQ about the change, Stride and HipChat last day will be February 15th, 2019 — or a bit shy of seven months
from the date of the announcement
So if you&re a customer on either one of those platforms, you&ve got time to figure things out.
It doesn''t sound like any of Atlassian
other products will be affected here; Bitbucket, Jira, etc
will carry on, with only the company real-time communications platforms being shuttered.
Hipchat was launched in beta form back in 2009,
long before Slack debut in 2013
It mostly ruled its space in the time in between, leading Atlassian to acquire it in March of 2012
Slack quickly outgrew it in popularity though, for myriad reasons — be it a bigger suite of third-party integrations, a better reputation
for uptime, or… well, better marketing
By September of 2017, Atlassian overhauled its chat platform and rebranded it as as &Stride&, but it was never able to quite catch up with
