With Stride, Atlassian wants to take on Slack, Skype, Google

Yet the new product will face considerable competition in an increasingly crowded market

Think of it as Slack plus Skype plus project-management software.

Corporate software company Atlassian is releasing a new program that combines chat, conference calls and project-tracking, competing with a host of start-ups and established companies like Microsoft with one product.

Called Stride, the new software attempts to bridge gaps that occur when workers discuss a project, make decisions and assign jobs to various workers, said Atlassian co-Chief Executive Officer Mike Cannon-Brookes. Like Atlassian’s messaging service HipChat and project-management program Jira, Stride works on mobile devices and desktop computers and plays nice with rival software. 

Atlassian is known for distributing its