Microsoft to Unbundle Teams from 365 Apps in EU

To appease ongoing investigations from the European Commission, Microsoft is unbundling Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 slate of services.

By doing this, Microsoft hopes to address two of the Commission's concerns:

• The option to choose a business suite without Teams at a lesser price
• To make interoperability easier between "rival communication and collaboration solutions" and its own suites

The unbundling will officially begin on October 1 and will take effect for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. 

As it takes effect, the company will sell its bundled offers for €2 less per month (or €24 per year) if users decide to avail of them without Teams.

"Teams will still be available for new enterprise customers to buy standalone and separately at a list price of €5 per month or €60 per year. Existing enterprise customers who already have a suite with Teams can choose to stay with their current productivity suite or to move to a without-Teams suite," the company explained.

The tech giant will also begin offering "extensive interoperability" with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 apps, allowing services such as Zoom and Salesforce to "create tailored and integrated experiences across Exchange, Outlook, and Teams."

New support resources are expected to improve the organization and direct app developers to available application programming interfaces (APIs) in its services that connect with Teams.

Lastly, Microsoft will create new ways to enable third-party services to host Office web applications.

The company shared that it has received requests from Teams competitors to be able to use Microsoft's services instead of creating their own, so it will develop a method for Office apps to be hosted within other competing apps and services.

''We believe these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the best possible solutions at competitive prices," Microsoft VP of European Government Affairs Nanna-Louse Linde wrote in a blog post.

"We will continue to engage with the Commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe," she concluded.

Edited by Nikola Djuric