GSA inks deal with Salesforce to lower price of Slack 90% for agencies

The General Services Administration has entered a governmentwide buying agreement with Salesforce, the parent company of Slack, to reduce the price of the enterprise version of the workplace productivity and collaboration tool by 90% per user for federal agencies.

GSA said in a press release Monday that it renegotiated “lower, fragmented discounts from individual agency deals” for a deal based on “total government purchasing volume” for Slack Enterprise Grid, resulting in a steep discount for agencies that will expire Nov. 30.

The two parties also reached an agreement that will lower the price of Slack AI for Enterprise for agencies by “almost 70% off per user.”

Salesforce, which acquired Slack in 2021 for $27.7 billion, is the latest commercial software vendor to reach a governmentwide purchasing agreement with GSA this year, resulting in lower costs for agencies. Google and Adobe also entered into agreements with the Trump administration since its inauguration. GSA and Microsoft arranged a similar deal that came just days before the Trump administration entered office. 

In the announcement release, GSA touted its “central role in procurement, maximizing cost savings, reducing redundancy, and streamlining IT acquisition with consistent pricing and terms across the federal government” as well as its so-called OneGov Strategy for IT procurement that it unveiled last month. 

Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said commercial firms are “experiencing first hand through the OneGov initiative that President Trump’s GSA is committed to being a good partner as we work together to deliver the best tools for the government at the best value for taxpayers.”

“These deals are a harbinger for the next phase, which is already underway, of longer term commitments from industry at discounted pricing in the new fiscal year and beyond,” Gruenbaum added.

Over time, the OneGov Strategy will expand into other IT fields such as hardware, platforms, infrastructure, and cybersecurity services, GSA said, claiming that with this initiative and others, “GSA will become the governmentwide hub for shared IT services.”

The updates follow a March executive order from President Donald Trump consolidating most of federal procurement, including IT acquisition, under GSA. Also in March, Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia sent a memo asking agency IT chiefs to inventory licenses with the top five grossing federal software vendors — three of which are companies GSA has now entered governmentwide agreements with: Microsoft, Adobe and Salesforce.