Other firms focused on workplace collaboration products, including Airtable, Asana, Box, DocuSign, Dropbox and Smartsheet, may also be potential targets as highly valued software companies look to roll up the fragmented market for collaboration tools.

In July, Atlassian, which sells tools for developers and project management, said it would buy the enterprise services business Mindville for an undisclosed amount. Adobe said last month that it planned to acquire the work force management software company Workfront for $1.5 billion. The deal is the biggest bet among a recent spate of acquisitions made by tech companies to capitalize on the shift to remote work. If completed, the acquisition will end Slack’s brief run as an independent publicly traded company - it went public in mid-2019 - and cap an acquisitive streak by Salesforce with its largest deal since it was founded 21 years ago.

SAN FRANCISCO - Salesforce said on Tuesday that it would buy the workplace software company Slack for $27.7 billion in cash and stock, the latest in a wave of deals as the coronavirus pandemic boosts demand for tools that enable people to work remotely.

Slack workfront integration