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Team collaboration app Atlassian Stride adds 20 integrations

Team collaboration app Atlassian Stride announced 20 new third-party integrations. The vendor is urging HipChat users to switch to Stride, as it concludes an early access program.

Jonathan Dame
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Published: 27 Mar 2018

Slack competitor Atlassian Stride has announced integrations with 20 additional third-party apps, including Dropbox, Trello and Google Drive. The vendor released an open API platform for developers in February, but Stride still offers fewer integrations than more mature team collaboration apps like Slack, which accommodates nearly 1,000 apps.

Atlassian Stride faces an uphill battle in the competitive team collaboration apps market, as it becomes formally available this week. The company said tens of thousands of teams joined the platform during an early access program that began in September.

Atlassian Stride offers teams-based instant messaging, web conferencing and file sharing -- features similar to team collaboration apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Spark, Avaya Zang, Unify Circuit and Ring Central Glip. Atlassian is best known for workflow products, including Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket.

Stride's chat interface includes basic task management functions, such as letting users identify messages that require follow-up or represent decisions. A highlights feed tracks all decisions and actions. The platform also includes a focus mode that lets users mute notifications while the app is open.

Atlassian developed its video conferencing platform using Jitsi, which the company acquired with the purchase of BlueJimp in 2015. The software supports native video conferencing and screen sharing for up to 20 people, a feature that should drive interest in Stride, said Irwin Lazar, an analyst at Nemertes Research, based in Mokena, Ill.

Atlassian Stride is cheaper than many other team collaboration apps on the market. The premium version costs $3 per user, per month, compared to $12 per user, per month for Cisco Spark. Slack has two paid tiers, which cost $6.67 per user, per month and $12.50 per user, per month. All three vendors offer freemium versions, with limited storage and fewer administrative controls.

Atlassian plans smooth transition for HipChat customers

Atlassian Stride, a cloud platform built from scratch, is the successor to HipChat, the group messaging app Atlassian acquired in 2012. For now, the company is letting HipChat customers transition at their own pace. 

"We are committed to supporting HipChat for as long as [customers] need," said Steve Goldsmith, the head of Stride and HipChat at Atlassian. "[But] we believe that Stride is a better solution for them."

Customers who use HipChat in the cloud can migrate to Stride today, bringing all existing teams, files, chat histories and log-in credentials with them.

Atlassian will continue to support the on-premises HipChat Data Center for customers with regulatory and compliance needs, Goldsmith said. At some point, Atlassian will provide on-premises HipChat users with an equally seamless path to Stride in the cloud, he said.

Atlassian will also use APIs to build hybrid environments that could allow customers to keep source code and files on premises while communicating in the cloud, Goldsmith said.

Atlassian should be able to move many of its HipChat customers to Stride, Lazar said, "but I think it will struggle to sell more broadly into an incredibly competitive market, especially when just about every UC solution these days now offers team collaboration."

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