
Atlassian launches Stride, its Slack competitor - davidjgraph
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/07/atlassian-launches-stride-its-slack-competitor/
======
morinted
Now we have Slack, Discord, Gitter, Microsoft Teams, and Atlassian Stride.

I'm not sure when chat rooms became a business tool. Personally, I find myself
distracted more than anything from all the notifications these apps cause, I
get less done.

I have to be sure to quit every chat app and put my phone in "do not disturb"
to disconnect and focus, and then I get coworkers mad that I'm not online.

At least with email I could take a while to reply without anyone blinking an
eye.

~~~
erikb
A common discussion I have with other developers.

For a developer I'd say I'm a little more people minded than average, and a
lot more big picture success oriented. And in both regards your personal
productivity doesn't really matter.

The biggest problem in software development is actually not per-coder-
performance but that the right things get solved, and that the solution are
actually good and quickly finished. Think about how much time you wasted using
a colleagues API that simply wasn't designed well, at least for your usecase.

So, if more information means you are working on the right things, and that
you understand your users better, and therefore make your tools more intiutive
and usable, a hit to your performance, even 50%, is not a problem.

The funny thing is from a big picture perspective sometimes it would be good
if some developers would just reduce their code output, without providing
anything else, because it would help keep all other developers in the loop.

~~~
shadowmint
This is well said... although I think its unlikely to be a popular opinion
with people at a personal level, but I hope the people who find themselves
disagreeing take a moment to reflect on it.

While I think it's fair to say these sorts of applications _do_ disrupt people
and reduce their productivity, I'm _certain_ that they help focus team efforts
in a way that meetings just don't.

You can't split off 3 members of the team and have an important technical
discussion during a meeting (or if you can, your project manager / meeting
organizer isn't doing their job). You can't come back later and see _exactly_
what it is you said that you'd do after a meeting. You can't tell a bot to
create a bunch of tickets or what the current status of a system is.

If you find that your chat apps are not providing you with any value, maybe
you're using them for stupid purposes like sharing funny pictures & this
mornings cool tech blog post, or you're subscribed to the support channel, or
your team is treating them like a social hang out space.

It's not that its a bad tool; its that you're using it wrong.

~~~
foobarian
I don't think funny pictures are a stupid purpose. They cheer me up and expose
a different side of my coworkers, increasing morale and team cohesion. Of
course they happen to be the right kind of funny pictures/links. :)

~~~
epicide
I think the point was: if that's _all_ that you use it for, then of course it
won't help productivity. It's like any other tool: it can be used to build or
destroy.

------
SomeHacker44
As the head of a company that uses HipChat... Thank you Atlassian. We have
intended to migrate to the (free and better) Mattermost for a long time and
just have been waiting for it to hit the top of our priority list. Knowing you
are abandoning the terrible HipChat for an entirely new product, with no
migration path and 50% more cost, makes this an easier choice.

You have been abandoning us on JIRA and Confluence as well. There are many
features that are not available on our self-hosted versions even when fully
upgraded. Your licensing and pricing terms get worse year after year even
though essentially absolutely nothing useful (to us anyway) ever gets added.

We even use Trello a little here and there... I expect that to go south too.

Well, at least we have GitLab and soon Mattermost, both suitable for much of
what we need, for free. Thank you for making our decisions easier.

~~~
new299
What are good options for replacing Confluence? I looked at available open
source wiki's maybe 1 or 2 years ago and there seems to be nothing that was as
easy to use for non-technical people (which would include having WYSIWYG style
editing).

Are there any good options now?

~~~
mgkimsal
A wiki that allows referencing to a ticketing system - the way you can tie
confluence docs to jira - is, imo, one of the unique tie-ins I've not seen
replicated in any other system.

Check list of items in confluence? Click and ... bam - tickets where you can
track discussion, media, code, etc. Link back to the definition doc, and the
doc has a status view of the ticket(s).

I've wondered if they've got some patent on this which has prevented other
folks from replicating it. Or... is everyone else so focused on "disparate
tools that talk to each other" that this tie in has never made it on anyone's
radar?

If this was in redmine (for example) - having the wiki be aware of the ticket
system - that would be great.

~~~
Gibheer
It does work in redmine[1] and that for years and the same as in github and
Jira, using the #XXXX notation.

[1]:
[http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextForm...](http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextFormattingMarkdown)

~~~
mgkimsal
That does not let me _create_ something _from_ the wiki, only reference issues
that already exist.

EDIT:

Specifically, allowing people who are primarily text driven to be reading a
doc/wiki page, right click a sentence or phrase, then create an issue right
from that screen, without leaving, and have them linked back and forth, is...
seemingly obvious, yet I've not seen it done elsewhere. Someone else pointed
out gitlab - I've not tried it there yet.

~~~
derintendant
There IS a Add-on for exactly that use case:
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.c...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.confluence.conjira/server/overview)

Disclaimer: I work for the Add-on developer

~~~
mgkimsal
For redmine?

The creation of jira tickets from confluence already seemed useful enough for
my use cases - not sure that I'd need a plugin to do more, but interesting to
see that you've got something (and to know others want it).

My original post was pointing out that this wiki/ticket connection is
something I've only ever seen in jira/confluence, not in anything else.

------
solatic
Not being available on-prem continues to show how poorly Atlassian treats its
enterprise customers.

* No feature parity

* No pre-built packages or support for configuration / infrastructure management - everything must be packaged completely from scratch, without recommended package specifications or Dockerfiles etc. to build off of. Nope - "here's a tar.gz. Have fun!"

* No proper enterprise support and no access to source code. We have a couple feature requests which are _deep, burning desires_ which we'd love to either throw money or developers at but we can't because we have no relationship with Atlassian and we have no idea if Atlassian will ever address them because they don't publish product roadmaps.

* Essential enterprise products like Crowd and Bamboo get short shrift and make it clear that communication inside Atlassian is lacking.

Example: Bitbucket Data Center shipped with support to enforce GPG-signed
commits. But because Crowd won't manage user GPG public keys, administrators
can't revoke user keys without disabling access to Bitbucket entirely (so, GPG
keys never get revoked), and Bamboo administrators can't enforce that project
builds only use Bitbucket repositories with GPG-enforcement enabled, so for
enterprises which actually need to _enforce_ audit trails (for compliance, for
building trust with deeply conservative customers...), the feature is
worthless.

Another example: Bamboo supports elastic build agents... but only on AWS. No
support for vSphere, OpenStack, or heck any other public clouds like GCE or
Azure. No Dockerized build agents for build jobs which don't themselves need
Docker.

Another example: Crowd is utterly lacking of any kind of investment. Sun
Directory Server Enterprise Edition? Supported. OpenID Connect? 2FA? RSA
SecurID? Yubikeys? lolnope. It finally got active-active clustering this year,
though, so maybe that's a good sign?

It's too bad their suite is in a class of its own because for all its faults,
it's in a class of its own. Everything else sucks, one way or another.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Agreed - we offer on-premise (and drive significant revenue from it) at
Userify for people who prefer their SSH key management in-house.

To be fair to Atlassian, they basically invented on-prem with SaaS-style
pricing (and did us all a great service), and their biggest competitor here
(Slack) isn't available on-prem either. Some of these features that you list
in Crowd are ironically very similar to missing features in our products, but
we're actively working on them -- while not losing focus on being the fastest
and easiest key manager to stand up.

Running a software business can be challenging -- especially with a myriad of
customer environments and feature requests. My feeling is that Atlassian got
really big really fast and may have lost sight of their key differentiator --
which, to me, at the time, was pricing and simplicity. It looks like this new
product might have brought back their flair on both counts.

~~~
solatic
For what it's worth, I'd love to try and push Userify at my workplace, but
without a trial version to install on-prem, I have nothing to try and persuade
people of the value of Userify. Such a trial version should be relatively easy
to push out the door - just disable Active Directory / LDAP integration in the
trial version.

Also, telling on-prem customers to run

curl -# [https://usrfy.io/upgrade.sh](https://usrfy.io/upgrade.sh) enterprise
|sudo -sE

to manually upgrade.... for a security product... completely DOA.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Awesome, thanks! We definitely offer trial versions to install on-prem with a
built-in permanent 10-server license (via a one-liner), and we provide 30 (and
sometimes 60) day free trials for however many servers you need for anyone who
asks. Converting to production is just a matter of pasting a new key. We could
probably make this a bit more clear on our website though (it's buried in our
docs section[1])

That is a good point and that doc page is really incomplete. Upgrades are
completely automatic in Userify, and without diving too deep into the `curl
https | sh` debate :), security conscious are always well advised to do the
regular curl > file.sh anyway, even with CA cert checks. Just a good idea.

1\.
[https://userify.com/docs/enterprise/installation/](https://userify.com/docs/enterprise/installation/)

~~~
solatic
> without diving too deep into the `curl https | sh` debate :)

So now that it's clear to me that it is possible to do an on-prem install, I
decided to look at your curl->sh install script.

You guys are basically justifying the fears of our security folks. After
grabbing sudo from the user, without asking permission, you pkill NTPD (!),
add pool.ntp.org (never mind that we may run our own NTP servers, specifically
to remove Internet-based dependencies to lower risk...) and start NTPD again,
invoke an install-pip script from a server you don't control
([https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py](https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py))
without attempting to see if maybe there's a local package of pip available,
and then install the EPEL repository. Which is, you know, a perfectly fine
repository, but there's a reason why the software included in it isn't
included with the official Red Hat repositories and so adding the EPEL
repository without asking permission to do so can wreak serious havoc on
servers with auto-update scripts installed with the intent to only grab
security fixes for installed software.

Why can't you guys just open-source some real packaging and respect the
sysadmins who you want to be your customers?

> Upgrades are completely automatic in Userify

Most enterprises who are paying sysadmins to manage their server environments
do so at least in part because they want their sysadmins to, you know,
_manage_ their server environments, like not upgrading services during peak
usage (cough, Windows 10, cough).

I'm not saying I won't still try out Userify... I'm saying that, when one of
my chief complaints about Atlassian was a lack of packaging support, you came
in to champion a product that not only doesn't provide packaging support, but
reminds me why packaging support is necessary. If Userify meets our needs,
we'll end up needing to package it internally, which means it has to go on our
priority list somewhere, and probably not near the top.

Sorry if this sounds harsh... just trying to keep it real.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Hi Solatic, no problem and appreciate your direct approach :)

Pull requests are gratefully accepted: [https://github.com/userify/userify-
server-tools](https://github.com/userify/userify-server-tools)

Why don't you discuss with one of our solutions architects (or me) by email
instead? Most enterprises definitely do package for their unique environment,
and we certainly will assist. My email is jamieson.becker@.

~~~
semperdark
You're making him go through an awful lot of trouble to be a customer. This
sounds like you're telling him to stop talking about his concerns so loudly
(in public) rather than actually looking into them.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound like that! Just didn't want to stray too
far OT.

But I meant what I said.. we work with a lot of larger companies that need to
integrate Userify into docker, ansible, terraform, chef, cloudformation, etc.
There's so many different ways that people prefer to manage their systems that
we don't want to push a single One True Way(tm).

We instead try to cover 80% of the use cases with a simple script that can be
deployed in a typical cloud scenario which is open sourced at github -- and
then customers can customize when necessary or even provide pull reqs back if
their customizations are generally applicable.

Some of the parent's complaints are themselves a result of issues that
customers have run into, and if this buried in an RPM, it'd be a lot less
transparent on what it does and how it works. For example, we force a pip
upgrade, because the version that's built into RHEL6 is too old and can't
build cryptography, etc. We also don't forcibly add pool.ntp.org -- we run
ntpdate against it to get a quick clock set. We have to add EPEL because RHEL6
and RHEL7 don't provide Redis in their own repos. This is designed to be run,
as the docs clearly state, on a clean RHEL7+ or Ubuntu 16+ instance with
defaults. How you customize it, either before or after, is entirely up to you.

Anyway, Userify is certainly not for everyone. A lot of people still prefer to
manage their keys with shell scripts or Chef or something, which usually works
great for small teams with flat perm structures.

Sorry for sidetracking the discussion about Atlassian. Even though we don't
use their software, I'm a big fan of their success story. Mike Cannon-Brooke's
deck on how they scaled Atlassian from $10k on a credit card is really quite
awesome.. I can't seem to find the video of him presenting it at a conference,
but the deck alone is great:

[https://www.slideshare.net/mcannonbrookes/scaling-
atlassian-...](https://www.slideshare.net/mcannonbrookes/scaling-atlassian-
march-2008)

------
eterm
Isn't hipchat its slack competitor? Where does this leave that project?

Hipchat is already suffering from poor support, its windows client is awful
since it went to "version 2".

~~~
marshallofsound
Check out the Stride FAQ: [https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-
documentation/faq-st...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-
documentation/faq-stride-and-hipchat-cloud-937165565.html)

> Starting soon, we will begin to upgrade all HipChat Cloud teams to Stride.
> HipChat Cloud will continue to work as it does today until your team
> upgrades to Stride. After upgrading, HipChat Cloud will remain in 'read-
> only' mode so that you can reference your API configuration in HipChat Cloud
> and receive integration notifications for those apps that are not yet in
> Stride.

~~~
briffle
Can't find any info about a datacenter edition, only the cloud. But if hipchat
is going away in cloud, then that is going to mean were not going to see any
new features in hipchat datacenter...

~~~
marshallofsound
There is a page on HipChat Data Center aswell:
[https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/faq-
st...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/faq-stride-and-
hipchat-data-center-937165566.html)

:)

~~~
mdekkers
Do you work for, or on behalf of Atlassian?

~~~
mattl
Looks like it.
[https://twitter.com/marshallofsound](https://twitter.com/marshallofsound)

------
illamint
Sad that this isn't available as an on-premises solution out of the gate.
We're stuck using internally-hosted HipChat for compliance reasons and it is
absolutely awful. The desktop and web clients have only gotten worse over
time. This confirms my worst fears that HipChat is basically abandonware.

~~~
c0wb0yc0d3r
If it wasn't so new I would say look at matrix. You can host that yourself and
chats are encrypted.

------
altotrees
So we have all of these chat apps. Choice is never a bad thing, but this has
to be somewhat beyond saturation point, no? I don't know about anyone else,
but I would rather have my work chat apps resemble social media chat apps less
rather than more. Fewer Gif's, fewer emojis — they can be funny and endearing
in the right context, but just feel forced and obtuse in a work setting. Also,
this is coming from the makers of Confluence and Jira...I'll have to try it
and see it in person before forming a true opinion, but not holding out too
much hope.

~~~
kody
I don't use any Atlassian products, but I see the appeal of a Slack-like chat
app that natively integrates with other Atlassian products - particularly for
knowledge management purposes. Businesses can configure/customize Slack to do
this, but it's not really intuitive.

~~~
notatoad
In my experience atlassian products dont really integrate with each other any
better than they do with third party products. I wouldn't expect a jira/stride
workflow to be any better than a jira/slack workflow.

------
bovermyer
I was ready to hate on this as just another Slack clone, but its unique
features (actions and decisions) sound pretty great. Those combined with the
Focus Mode sound like what Slack needs to have, to be honest.

~~~
Moru
Slack is just another IRC clone anyway... :-)

~~~
pavel_lishin
And cellphones are just a clone of Marconi's radio.

------
cpursley
My only question is, which Slack alternative does not use half my CPUs and
suck down my battery just to run ideally in the background?

~~~
ComputerGuru
It’s not slack but electron.

We’ve been floating the idea of developing a native client for slack (we have
experience in this field, having developed a Windows client for iMessage) but
haven’t decided if it would be worth our while.

~~~
MikeKusold
Across the board false. Slack is working to reduce the footprint. Listen to
the Software Engineering Daily [0] podcast about it (performance conversation
begins around 38:45)

[0]
[https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/11/typescript-a...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/11/typescript-
at-slack-with-felix-rieseberg/)

------
codq
Twist, by the makers of Todoist, is another take on work chat.

[https://twistapp.com/](https://twistapp.com/)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
I really like the idea of twist and it seems to work better in the trial we
did. But it had some shortcomings

1\. No linux client 2\. UI/UX is not as polished as slack 3\. Can't paste
images from clipboard 4\. Doesn't support webhooks which means that service
integrations are almost nonexistent

~~~
compuguy
No on-perm option either.

------
pmulv
> There also is emoji and Giphy support, of course.

But why? It seems that Stride is trying to be the more productive version of
Slack, and I think action items and decision notes have potential, but if I
keep getting :partyparrot: instead of information related to my job, I'm going
to keep basically ignoring my communications app.

~~~
croon
I'm unsure if that's a system problem or if [team member] can ruin any medium.

I don't mind planning poker cards having the coffee mug, or the occasional
friday afternoon song playing out the speakers, etc, as long as there is a
social contract where everyone respects moderation.

~~~
rtpg
Definitely agree that people cause issues in communication.

Tools can encourage good behaviour and discourage bad behavior though.

I've found that GIFs end up being a bit too far down the "pop culture"
spectrum to be worth having in Slack, for example. Net negative for
comfortable communication when not everyone is on the same meme spectrum

------
1_2__4
How the hell did we go from realizing massive enterprise software was a bad
deal to suddenly embracing it all over again? Not that stuff like Oracle and
Salesforce ever went away, but I seriously don't understand why small
companies buy into the Faustian bargain of "yes please vendor, I'd love to be
in a position where I'm tied to your company forever, that sounds great".

~~~
Karunamon
For something as ephemeral as instant message, there's no real lock-in to
speak of. The migration path is:

1) Grant your users access to the new tool

2) There is no 2.

Pain only comes when you're storing organizational knowledge in an instant
message tool.

------
dabernathy89
Like Slack, it has per user pricing. This means it's difficult for large open
source projects to use it if they have any interest in keeping a permanent
log, or even keeping a message history that goes back more than a few days.

Feature-wise, the "Actions and Decisions" tools sound pretty interesting.
Definitely a pain point with Slack. We've been using Slack for a lot of our
planning for the Longhorn PHP conference
([https://www.longhornphp.com](https://www.longhornphp.com)), and it's
honestly not been great. Conversations & decisions about particular topics get
buried; if someone wasn't present for a conversation, it's likely they'll
never see it. I know Slack isn't a project management tool - we've been using
a mix of Google Docs and Trello for that. But even as a communications tool it
feels fragile and incomplete.

~~~
cialowicz
Open source projects can request free licenses from Atlassian. Here's the
form: [https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-
license...](https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-license-
request)

Presumably, they'll add Stride to that form eventually.

~~~
bananateam
yes, we will eventually.

~~~
dabernathy89
that's really good news!

------
brightball
Looks really sharp to me. I like what I see from the workflow, especially when
it comes to getting caught back up on things after being away for vacation or
snooze.

I'll be interested to see how the Remote Desktop Control premium feature works
too. That seems geared towards collaboration/pairing.

#1 question though...will they have a Linux client that they actually care
about. The Hipchat linux client was largely an afterthought that hung
regularly. It was better to just use Rambox and keep the web version open.

------
harisamin
A bit off topic but I have been working on a native Mac slack app on and off
for the past couple of years. Truly native, no web views except for the Slack
oauth login.

Would ppl be interested in beta-testing it? Would ppl here be interested in
paying for something like that?

Here are some links to screenshots so you know its not just vaporware :)

[https://twitter.com/harisamin/status/727634194814373889](https://twitter.com/harisamin/status/727634194814373889)

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChkTccjVAAAZ0Kt.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChkTccjVAAAZ0Kt.png)

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChkTcbMUkAIYolx.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChkTcbMUkAIYolx.png)

~~~
cyberferret
Seems cool. If it can use 1/10th of the memory/CPU footprint of the current
Slack Atom based client (as your screenshots seem to indicate), then all the
better.

Good luck with your project!

------
sjellis
It's good to see thoughtful competition in this space - Slack is mostly a joy
to use, but we really need healthy competition. In the absence of widely-used
open standards, the consequences of putting ever-increasing our institutional
memories into proprietary, centrally controlled systems may depend upon how
much competitive pressure the providers feel.

~~~
waisbrot
Chat applications for work are insanely sticky, though? You can offer 5 great
new features and a $500/month lower price-tag and I'm probably not going to
want to lose my searchable chat history and have everyone unable to
communicate for a week while we switch.

~~~
sjellis
Yep. Since there are no interoperability standard, any new entrant into the
market is now going to have to spend a lot of resources on developing a
process to reliably migrate accounts and history out of Slack, Yammer etc.

------
013a
I have no faith in anything atlassian builds anymore. They've constantly
burned enterprise customers. HipChat was a horrible product for its entire
life. Jira is _so slow_ I cannot fathom why anyone chooses it except that
there are no competitors. The only advantage they have across their suite is
that their products are pretty cheap.

------
mmahemoff
Hard to take it seriously when Hipchat came first and languished for so long.
Even basic stuff like Emoji was a fail (their list included (arrington) and
(derp)).

Why launch a new Slack clone when you already have something so closely
matching the architecture of Slack? I assume "technical debt" but that's
rarely a good reason to start from scratch.

~~~
hobofan
> Why launch a new Slack clone when you already have something so closely
> matching the architecture of Slack?

A new possibility to build a brand and reputation? From what I can gather
HipChat has a pretty "meh" reputation.

~~~
pavel_lishin
And a justified reputation at that, but between Hipchat, and Jira's frankly
atrocious text formatting, I'm more afraid of Stride than looking forward to
it. Hipchat may be crummy, but at least it's a familiar crummy that I've
learned to work around.

------
_JamesA_
Slack, HipChat, Mattermost, Skype, IRC, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, etc,
etc.

Am I the only one that can't keep track of what service (or app) I need to use
to communicate with which person, team or organization?

I'll stick with e-mail until these services finally agree to federate.

~~~
sdiepend
[https://xkcd.com/1810/](https://xkcd.com/1810/)

------
tomschlick
I'm curious as to what will happen to HipChat. Having 2 competing chat
products under one roof isn't ideal, I'd assume one will get the axe at some
point.

~~~
marshallofsound
There is a direct migration path from HipChat Cloud to Stride:
[https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/faq-
st...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/faq-stride-and-
hipchat-cloud-937165565.html)

~~~
Karunamon
Yow, that was unexpected. Relevant words:

 _Do you plan to sunset HipChat Cloud?_

 _For now, HipChat Cloud will continue to be supported, but eventually we will
encourage all HipChat Cloud customers to upgrade to Stride._

------
cyphar
Wait, what happened to HipChat? I get that it's not as sexy as Slack, but
honestly they're all basically just IRC with images and some other
integrations. Why start a whole new project (which presumably isn't XMPP under
the hood).

From memory, Slack started out as a HipChat competitor. Not to mention, what
is the on-premises story going to be (which was a major selling point of
HipChat).

~~~
compuguy
They are continuing to support HipChat Datacenter edition...for what it's
worth.

------
joombaga
I wonder if this has anything to do with the security incident earlier this
year [1]. My company terminated all HipChat subscriptions after the incident.
A rebranding (understood that this is more than that) may allow some companies
to revisit the product.

[1] Linking the cached version since the hipchat blog now points to Stride:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c6dtRh...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c6dtRhySYi0J:https://blog.hipchat.com/2017/04/24/hipchat-
security-notice/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
zoom6628
Now a new tool with which you can fill the remaining % of your day which isnt
in some "social" sphere already. Im glad there is competition for Slack, just
as glad that this is coming from a ISV of developer tools so maybe it will be
something that is slanted in favor of things that developers, product
managers(me) and delivery teams need such as answers get tagged and go to
knowledge base, can send check in/out commands for bots to use, etc without
having to make the bot ourselves.

On the usage of chat Im lucky that 2500 of my colleagues are not in the same
timezone, and the ones that are, are already too busy to spend time talking
about it. So i dont have a constant torrent of activity to respond to.
Internally we use Yammer, and like email, it allows me to attend to it and get
involved at the time and duration of my choosing. Bottom line how such systems
get used is a matter of your preferred work style, corporate culture, and
market needs.

And you have commend Atlassian for coming up with a name that is indicative
(to me anyway) of impact the product should have. "Stride" suggest big steps,
not baby steps. Its walking with purpose, cadence, and at speed. Their other
product "hipster" suggests completely the obvious i.e. react viscerally
('quantitative gut feel'), follow trends ('follow the crowd not your own
intelligence'), bleeding edge, oh....and you may need to grow a beard and use
a satchel and rider a fixie in order to use it properly.

------
vssr
Working for a company that uses Bitbucket, Jira and Slack, I'm carefully
optimistic. It would be great to have reliable, well maintained integration
between chat and the Atlassian tools.

------
aargh_aargh
So... is this a website, an Electron app or a native app?

------
bachmeier
I wish companies would stop doing big release announcements followed by a
signup that puts me on the waitlist. Let me try it out right now if you want
to tell me about it. I'll get an email nine months down the road and probably
just delete it because I won't even have thought about it after the
announcement.

------
tiffanyh
I realize there is a lot of Hipchat hate but ...

One of the things I really liked about Hipchat was the information density vs
Slack.

Stride seems to be very loose in how much information it shows.

See screenshots as a comparison.

[1]
[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/actions...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/actions-
and-decisions-with-highlights.png)

[2]
[https://ga0.imgix.net/screenshot/o/10167-1442255801-0858462?...](https://ga0.imgix.net/screenshot/o/10167-1442255801-0858462?ixlib=rb-1.0.0&ch=Width%2CDPR&auto=format)

------
eloff
For the privacy conscious, there's also
[https://www.secure.chat/](https://www.secure.chat/) if you want a slack
alternative with end-to-end client-side encryption. You can choose which
channels or even individual messages you want private and encrypted. Of
course, the tradeoff with end-to-end encryption like that is the content is
opaque to the server and can't be indexed or searchable, but you get to choose
how you want to make that tradeoff when you send the message.

Disclaimer: I worked on secure.chat in the past.

------
lukepothier
Fingers crossed it has desktop clients that aren't written in Electron...

~~~
neilsimp1
Have you noticed Slack slow down/use too many resources as a result of being
an Electron app? Honest question, I've never used Slack, but have used other
Electron apps and never really have any issues.

~~~
tushar-r
The Slack app on my mac kept using up a lot of RAM frequently. I'd have it
running for a few days and suddenly the laptop would be unusable, with only
~200MB of RAM free. Slack would suddenly be using 2-3GB of memory. Kill slack
and everything works fine.

I've restored to using slack on Safari now. This problem still occurs, but
reloading the slack tab is easier then finding and killing the slack process.

------
LeicaLatte
I find Slack to be less useful when it is used by more than a single person. I
use it as a notification log/sink and it works great. Definitely trying out
atlassian stride.

------
jpalomaki
One thing Slack could improve is handling this when following multiple slacks.
At least with the windows client it seems that I need to occasionally click
through all of them to see if there are messages for me. Not sure if this is a
bug or a feature (could be some attempt to minimise resource usage).

For just keeping track of what's happening around, I would love a view showing
all the messages across all (or selected) Slacks/channels.

------
raaaaraaaa1
let's hope that Stride will have minimalistic memory footprint ...fingers
crossed. It's not nice to have 400mb taken from 5 Slack IM's.

~~~
markdog12
I'd be very surprised if it wasn't an Electron app, which comes with all the
baggage you describe.

------
Rjevski
Does this have native clients for desktop (instead of Slack's Electron
garbage)? If so this might be one of its key selling points.

~~~
madeofpalk
Seeing as Atlassian is a Web + Java shop, and reasonably invested in React,
it's doubtful.

------
johansch
Does each chat line submission take at least one second to process? If so I
will feel right at home, knowing it's Atlassian-made!

------
capkutay
At least this is a better attempt than RingCentral's chat app which was a
shameless, cheesy knock off of Slack.

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*I50CoGFK328HeWSvu...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*I50CoGFK328HeWSvuLdh4A.gif)

------
bitwize
I thought HipChat was their Slack competitor? Jesus christ make up your minds
people

~~~
mihaela
HipChat was them buying time to compete with Slack.

~~~
knotty66
HipChat was around way before Slack.

------
dolguldur
No reaction emojis? That's such a useful feature to avoid :thumbup: / yes / no
/ me too / haha messages. In bigger groups it's also a really nice and
lightweight way to do quick polls.

------
rglover
If this has an API, I'm fully onboard. The remote desktop control is something
I've been patiently awaiting in Slack since they scooped up ScreenHero but
they've done nothing with it.

~~~
marshallofsound
It has an API -->
[https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/stride/](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/stride/)

:)

------
akilism
no end to end encryption?

~~~
bogle
This is seriously one of the killer features. How can a company use this if
everything is in the clear? How can you even have a conversation if at any
time it can all be dragged up and pored over? The double ratchet of Signal,
for instance, is open source so just implement it already.

~~~
rtpg
But companies want records of communication! They want/need auditable records.

If two employees want to chat in secret, companies sure don't want that
happening

------
ElijahLynn
I really like the Actions/Decisions concept and also the Stride Focus Mode.
Good UX improvements that seem likely other messaging applications will borrow
from.

------
bandrami
If Stride is its Slack competitor what the hell is Hipchat?

------
program_whiz
More examples of needless tool cloning. Rather than reinvent IRC of the
90s/00s, where is the real innovation from Silicon Valley and the tech world?

~~~
noxToken
Sometimes tech isn't about innovation, discovery and breakthrough. Sometimes
it's about integrating existing technology into the workflow of your customer
base. Plenty of businesses big and small use the Atlassian product suite. This
is a way for those businesses to have a chat client that is native to their
suite.

Tech isn't always sexy. Sometimes tech is just good business sense.

~~~
program_whiz
Don't agree. I will accept the term "business technology" insofar as Atlassian
is rewriting existing concepts for business. But that's like saying buying a
house and renting it for profit is "good business technology" \-- its just an
existing method being used for something else, I guess a house is a type of
technology.

In my mind, when someone says they are a "technology company", what that means
is that they want to sell technology (new approaches to solving problems).
Making the same thing over and over with minor variations and calling it
"tech" just because it runs on computers (30 year old tech) is just excusing
it.

The truth is, Atlassian saw the $$ that slack is making and wanted to get a
piece of the pie, I highly doubt they thought: "Eureka! I've come up with a
new technology to improve communication of a team. Its like email but in real
time!"

~~~
noxToken
That's literally what I said:

>> _Sometimes tech isn 't about innovation, discovery and breakthrough.
Sometimes it's about integrating existing technology into the workflow of your
customer base._

Technology companies don't just create new things. Business is not 100%
innovation. Not even the giants like MSFT, Google, FB, Amazon, and Apple spend
all of their employee power on creating something new. Sometimes it's giving
your customer base what they want.

I don't think anyone is billing Slide as the next frontier in chat software.
Atlassian is porting over existing functionality to work natively with their
other products. With the wide adoption of Slack, it's obvious that chat
software is something Atlassian's customers are probably using, so why not
make that hooks into the other products?

It doesn't matter if you're a tech company, a real estate company, a law firm,
or a medical practice - if your customers want something that integrates well
with what you're offering, it makes good business sense to see if it can work.

------
Karunamon
And this after they just got done doing a massive rearchitect of the self-
hosted HipChat. Now I wonder where they plan on going with that...

------
mansilladev
Info on the Stride API at
[https://developer.atlassian.com](https://developer.atlassian.com)

------
rukenshia
Is this thing a fork of Rocket.Chat? Looks a lot like it, I hope it won't be
as bad as rocket chat.

~~~
compuguy
What's wrong with Rocket.Chat? It looks like it takes some design choices from
it.

------
bassman9000
As long as we can get rid of Skype and Webex with a single tool, I'd be more
than happy

------
btbuildem
Is it going to be as bad as JIRA?

~~~
Sujan
How bad is JIRA?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
That depends heavily on how bad the person controlling your Jira configuration
is. If they are bad it is pure torture. If they are good it is tolerable.

------
gtirloni
I can't find any information about accessibility features.

Getting zero results in their docs.

------
bobsil1
Another Slack clone that's not end-to-end encrypted. Why even bother?

------
abiox
now we just need a chat app that bridges all the chat apps. (again)

~~~
sturmeh
Why would a business use multiple solutions?

~~~
wila
As a contractor with multiple customers and each their own chat solution it is
kind of handy to have it all in one area.

------
royge
I hope the client is not resource hungry like slack.

------
jcg8802
They named it after the worst gum on earth. C'mon at least call it 5 or
trident.

Bubbalicious for Business is even a better name.

So is Wrigley's for Work.

------
n4s33r
Is it Electron based ? :(

------
thrillgore
So...HipChat?

------
AncoraImparo
So... a reskinned version of HipChat, ok.

------
lin_lin
From the makers of Jira and Confluence... no thanks.

~~~
breakingcups
Could you at least add what your criticism on those two products is?

Jira and Confluence get a lot of hate, but I feel like that's mostly because
of how it's set up by organizations.

At my organization we've set up Jira (and later Confluence) in a very
developer-centric way, by looking at the best way it could help the developer
first, project manager second.

This has led to universal adoption and no complaints or ill attitudes toward
Atlassian products.

~~~
Karunamon
I can definitely echo this. Confluence is just a wiki, Jira is just an issue
tracker - both of these kinds of tools are table stakes for any serious
development group. Most of the hate comes from the crappy setups enforced by
overbearing companies. I've got very few complaints with either of these tools
_when developers are included in the talks about how they 're to be set up and
used_.

Any tool can be made obnoxious if managed incorrectly.

------
shangxiao

        > Atlassian, the company behind popular tools like … Trello
    

sigh

It's somewhat of a misleading statement that. My take on the "behind" is in
the sense that they designed and created the product from its conception. I
really love the Trello UX and believe that Atlassian products are the exact
polar opposite. The only way an Atlassian product seems to gain love from a
community is if they emulate something already in existence.

~~~
mhp
Hi! Co-founder Trello here. Agree that “behind” is maybe weird here and
probably not intentional but then again the whole Trello team is now part of
Atlassian. Every day we are part of the group of people that are building the
future products and features. Even without us, I think today’s launch shows
Atlassian is heavily invested in “unleashing the potential of EVERY team”
(emphasis mine) and their design and understanding of how to do that is
evolving. If you love the Trello UX then my guess is you are going to be
pleasantly surprised about where we go in the future.

~~~
archildress
Just wanted to take a second and thank you for Trello. It's a staple of my
everyday life and helps me get things done. I'm sure you've heard those
sentiments before, but I can't describe how much better it makes my work.

~~~
mhp
Thanks for taking the time to say that. One of the most rewarding experiences
of my role has been accepting thanks like yours, online and in person, on
behalf of the team that actually built the product. We owe all of our success
to your recommendations and referrals.

~~~
graeme
Thanks indeed. It's been wonderful! Incredibly flexible in how it can be used,
it powers a lot of my business, and takes stuff out of my brain for personal
tasks as well. Such an intuitive tool.

------
lightedman
Camfrog still reigns supreme IMHO. Voice and video chat with thousands of
people at once, notifications are easily disabled so you can just focus on the
conversation while doing your work, and if someone wants to show you
something, all you have to do is click on their name to open their video
window. The chat rooms can be set up to allow a single person to speak at a
time or multiple people to speak simultaneously.

Even has a words filter so you can just filter out words you don't like from
conversations, if you don't like vernacular.

So good Paltalk bought Camfrog just for the video tech, then resold it back to
Camfrog.

The only real downside to Camfrog is a lack of chat history, excepting in your
IMs. Rooms do not have a chat history (admins have log access, though.)

When these other apps provide a real chat function instead of it being a
bolted-on afterthought, I might be convinced to switch. Until then, Camfrog's
been the only social/chat/networking program/app that I've paid money for.

------
jgritty
Atlassian should fix their other shitty tools.

