Microsoft will offer its Teams chat and video app independently from its Office product globally, the US tech giant announced on Monday, six months after unbundling the two products in Europe to avoid a potential EU antitrust fine.
Microsoft’s Integration
The European Commission has been looking into Microsoft’s integration of Office and Teams since a 2020 complaint from Salesforce-owned competitive workspace messaging tool Slack.
Teams, which was launched to Office 365 for free in 2017, eventually supplanted Skype for Business and gained popularity throughout the pandemic, thanks in part to its video conferencing.
Rivals, meanwhile, claim that putting the goods together offers Microsoft an unfair edge. The corporation began selling the two goods separately in the EU and Switzerland on August 31 of last year.
“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies.”
European Economic Area
Microsoft announced in a blog post that it is launching a new array of commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that do not include Teams in locations outside the EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland, as well as a new standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers in those territories.
Beginning April 1, clients can choose to renew, update, or switch to the new licencing packages.
For new commercial clients, Office without Teams costs between $7.75 to $54.75 depending on the package, while Teams Standalone costs $5.25.
The figures may differ by country and currency. The company did not provide prices for its current packaged items.
Microsoft’s unbundling may not be enough to avoid EU antitrust charges, which are expected to be levied against the business in the coming months.
As rivals criticize the costs and the capacity of their messaging services to function with Office Web Applications in their own services, according to sources.
Microsoft, which has received 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in EU antitrust fines over the last decade for tying or bundling two or more products together, faces a fine of up to 10% of its global annual revenue if found guilty of antitrust violations.
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