San Francisco, Jul 13 (IANS): Taking on professional collaboration tool Slack, Microsoft's Teams is now available for free in 40 languages worldwide.

Currently, more than 200,000 businesses across 181 markets globally use Teams -- a hub for chatting, sharing documents, video and voice calling in Microsoft 365 -- to collaborate and get work done.

"Whether you're a freelancer, a small business owner, or part of a team inside a large organisation, you can start using Teams today," Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft, said in a statement on Friday.

The free version, that can be used in a organisation with up to 300 employees, will provide unlimited chat messages and search, built-in audio and video calling for individuals, groups, and full team meetups, 10GB of team file storage plus additional 2 GB per person for personal storage.

It will also provide integrated, real-time content creation with Office Online apps, including built-in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

The free version will give unlimited app integrations with over 140 business apps to choose from -- including Adobe, Evernote, and Trello.

"This new offering provides a powerful introduction to Microsoft 365. Teams in Microsoft 365 includes everything in the free version plus additional storage, enterprise security, and compliance, and it can be used for your whole organisation, regardless of size," Markezich said.