• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 2, 2016

Taking on Slack and other similar communication platforms, Microsoft debuted Teams -- a chat-based “workspace” in Office 365.

“It’s naturally integrated with the familiar Office applications and is built from the ground up on the Office 365 global, secure cloud,” Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team, notes in a new blog post.

On Wednesday, the Microsoft Teams beta was made available to Office 365 Enterprise and Business users in 181 countries, and in 18 languages. A broader rollout is expected by the first quarter of 2017.

Teams is Microsoft’s response to the growing popularity of Slack among professionals. The popular messaging and collaboration platform was most recently valued at about $3.8 billion and is backed by Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners, among others.

Slack has quickly established itself as a company to watch in the white-hot mobile messaging space. Standing apart from rival messaging services -- namely Facebook -- Slack has convinced subscribers to fork over monthly fees for premium features.

Facebook, for its part, recently rolled out “Work Chat” -- a messaging app designed specifically for business teams. Between its WhatsApp unit and Facebook Messenger, Facebook already dominates the mobile-messaging space.

To encourage engagement, the new Microsoft Teams supports “persistent” and threaded chats. By default, conversations are visible to the entire time, but private discussions available as an option.

Of course, Skype is integrated into Teams -- so users can participate in voice and video conferences -- along with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI and Delve.