Alibaba’s answer to Slack gets a facelift in bid to ride on China’s business digitalisation wave
- DingTalk unveils a new logo and motto, as the platform joins forces with Alibaba’s cloud unit to capture enterprise clients
- China’s booming digital workplace market was valued at more than US$4 billion last year, according iiMedia Research
Alibaba Group Holding has introduced a sweeping upgrade to DingTalk, its workplace chat tool once known as the “Orwellian version of Slack”, in hopes of turning the app into a gateway for Chinese enterprises to digitise their business by using the firm’s cloud infrastructure.
The app’s old motto “make work and study easy” is replaced with “let progress happen”, while the new logo is a slightly slanted version of the old design, which DingTalk said puts emphasis on the wings instead of the lightning bolt.
The facelift underscores the ambitions of Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, to turn itself from a consumer-facing e-commerce giant into a service provider for businesses, according to a company statement.
DingTalk is positioning itself as an assistant in the digital economy based on the idea of “platform-as-a-service”, a type of cloud computing that provides a complete development and deployment environment for clients, said Ye Jun, president of DingTalk, known locally as Ding Ding.
“Digitalisation is helping enterprises find certainties in uncertainties … and we aim to be the one who provides services in this digital economy era,” Ye said.
DingTalk’s revamp comes as growth in Alibaba’s core businesses, consisting mainly of Taobao and Tmall, are slowing down amid a maturing Chinese market, intensified competition and tougher regulations. Alibaba reported a 10 per cent revenue increase in the three months ended December 31, marking its slowest sales growth since it went public in 2014.
On the other hand, Alibaba’s cloud computing service is experiencing robust growth, allowing the Hangzhou-based company to capitalise on the growing demand from Chinese businesses to digitise their management and operations.
