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Salesforce has agreed to buy workplace messaging app Slack for just over $27 billion.

It marks the biggest deal made by the cloud-computing giant and furthers its rivalry with Microsoft.

By purchasing Slack, U.S. firm Salesforce has bet remote working will be here for a long while yet.

The deal - one of the biggest tech mergers in recent years - allows Salesforce to provide a unified platform for businesses,

Where employees, customers and partners can connect with each other and the apps they use.

For Slack, the deal comes as it struggles to fully capitalize on the switch to remote working seen during the global health crisis.

The app has proven popular with businesses over the last few years.

It effectively changed workplace communications by focusing on real-time messaging that could be broken into conversations with groups.

It proved a more versatile platform than email.

But the messaging style that Slack helped build has become a highly competitive space.

Microsoft has aggressively promoted its similar Teams product with integrated video and voice calling.

It has also bundled Teams with many of its office software packages - a big attraction for companies that want to save costs.