We could have operated with that kind of IT infrastructure, but the cost and complexity would have made it much harder to launch the business.” Which services of AWS cloud used by SLACK: “Plus we would have needed an extra layer of expertise just to run the infrastructure. “The realities of physical space, hardware acquisition, replacement parts, running a server facility with all its costs-all the physical manifestations that can lead to breakages-made a traditional IT environment impractical for an Internet startup,” says Richard Crowley, Slack’s director of operations. Going to the cloud was the logical choice. If Slack was to succeed in a fiercely competitive business-software marketplace, its founders knew they would need a lean staff, low costs, and above all an IT environment capable of supporting speed, agility, and innovation. One of those was the importance of picking the right IT infrastructure to run the business. Slack’s founders had already learned hard lessons from previous failed ventures. By June 2015-less than 18 months after its launch-the company already had more than 1.1 million daily users, 300,000 paid seats, and more than 30 million messages flowing through Slack each week via integrations with other services. In the age of the unicorn startups, Slack has drawn attention for its meteoric rise and potential for disrupting traditional business communications tools, particularly email. Privately-held Slack is on Fortune Magazine’s “Unicorn List” of startup firms worth $1 billion or more, with a $2.8 billion valuation supported by a five percent weekly user growth rate and major brand-name customers including Adobe, Samsung, Intuit, NASA, Dow Jones, eBay, and Expedia. The San Francisco–based company, which launched its eponymous app in February 2014, was started by a small group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that include Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield.

Slack provides a messaging platform that integrates with and unifies a wide range of communications services such as Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Jira, GitHub, MailChimp, Trello, and Stripe.

Slack on aws