Thomson Reuters is partnering with the 'Slack for Wall Street'

Thomson Reuters, one of the largest providers of financial data, announced on Tuesday a partnership with a Silicon Valley messaging startup.

Users of Eikon, Thomson Reuters' software platform of financial data, news, and analysis, will now have the option to send messages via Symphony, a message application for financial services professionals, akin to Slack, a cloud-based message app.

The service is set to launch later this year, according to a news release.

Deb Walton, global managing director of customer propositions at Thomson Reuters, told Business Insider that the partnership reflects the firm's desire to break down barriers to communication for their clients. She said many of Thomson Reuters clients use Symphony. In total, the startup has seen its customer base grow to 200,000 from about 110,000 as of October 2016.

"Thomson Reuters' messaging service is well utilized," Walton said."However, we are not in the business of providing messaging for messaging's sake."

"We provide holistic workflow solutions for customers, and if their choice is to use Symphony to communicate we want them to have that choice," she added.

Eikon and Symphony will sit side-by-side on Eikon users' desktops, according to a spokesperson for Thomson Reuters.

If an Eikon user needs to send data, analysis, or charts, they will be able to send them via Symphony's messaging platform or through Eikon messenger. If the person who they are sending the message to is also subscribed to Eikon and Symphony, then that data will be live, rather than just a time-stamped screen shot.

Symphony's messaging services are now used by over 200,000 users across 170 companies. It was backed by Google as well as some of the biggest Wall Street banks. Some even went as far as to refer to it as a potential "Bloomberg killer," referring to Bloomberg LCC, another provider of financial data and software.