How Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is using acquisition after acquisition to power his plan to take on Microsoft

• Slack is Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date. But the deal is only part of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s greater vision to expand Salesforce’s capabilities and compete with Microsoft. 
• Salesforce has made over 60 acquisitions since Benioff cofounded the company in 1999, and they’re helping Salesforce edge closer towards a unified platform where clients can learn everything they need to know about their customers in one place. 
• As Salesforce continues to expand, it’s also challenging Microsoft by offering direct parallel services. Slack, which competes directly with Microsoft Teams, is the latest example. 

When Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff decided to acquire workplace messaging app Slack for $27.7 billion on Tuesday, he signed off on the company’s largest acquisition deal to-date. 

It was hardly his first, of course.

Benioff has orchestrated over 60 acquisitions since he cofounded Salesforce in 1999, and the deals have come to represent a key growth strategy for the cloud-based software company. By gobbling up every type of software service a company might require, Benioff has put Salesforce in a position to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google.