Atlassian Buys Hall to Give HipChat a Leg Up in the Market

The name “Atlassian” might not be immediately recognizable, but chances are one of its flagship offerings, HipChat, might be much more so, thanks to a recent string of commercials featuring perennial thorn in workers' sides Bill Lumbergh. Lumbergh serves as a manager so clueless about technology that he's continually demanding meetings, when work is actually getting done on platforms like HipChat. Now, HipChat's about to get even more powerful as Atlassian picked up the work chat tool called Hall.

The arrangement that brought Hall under Atlassian's control was struck, at last report, for an undisclosed sum, and with it will come all of Hall's users, who will be migrated into being HipChat users instead. Considering that Hall is currently being used by major companies like NetApp and Amazon, that's a hefty stack of users—and high-profile ones as well—going into HipChat's coffers, at least in the short term. Meanwhile, Hall will be shut down at the end of the fiscal year, according to reports, removing one potential competitor from a field of such things.

This isn't the first time that Atlassian has gotten acquisitive; earlier this month, the company bought BlueJimp, a company which deals in videoconferencing tools. With that, Atlassian planned to build most of BlueJimp's videoconferencing systems into HipChat and make HipChat stronger for it. With Hall, meanwhile, HipChat may be able to show that it can work with non-technical teams as well, something of a deviation from the technical focus that HipChat had previously. Given that HipChat has grown by better than 50 percent in the last six months alone, it may well have a point in its progression.

Atlassian's president, Jay Simons, offered up a bit of commentary around the move as well, saying “Hall have amassed an impressive set of customers by thinking not just about what the product can do, but also the overall experience of using it based on the specific needs of different types of teams and industries.”

This is likely to prove a positive move for Atlassian in the end. There were some surprising stirrings around, wondering why anyone would bother paying for HipChat when a variety of services ranging from Skype to Join Me and several others are offering up the service for free. If Atlassian can use its newfound connection to Amazon and the like, current Hall users, to show the impact that HipChat can have, then it's got a much better potential to make its case in the market, and potentially even get users out of current programs to use “the one Amazon uses.” HipChat's marketing has certainly given it a boost; putting “HipChat” in a YouTube search bar reveals “commercial” and “Lumbergh” in the autocomplete slots. But will the marketing be enough to get people to make the move?

One thing's for sure, though; the conferencing market is a competitive one, with all manner of product eager to become the next big thing. There are certainly more than enough options on shelves today, so convincing the market to use one in particular might take more than even the kind of pop culture weight that Bill Lumbergh can offer. Only time will tell how this all boils down, but Atlassian may have a smart idea in the works.

Edited by Maurice Nagle