Microsoft separated Teams from its Office products in Europe last year to address regulator concerns. Now it seems the company will be implementing this change globally.
According to a Reuters report, Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters:
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.
The unbundling means Microsoft enterprise customers around the globe will be able to purchase Microsoft 365 subscriptions without Teams, or have to buy a standalone version of Teams.
The spokesperson added:
Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies.
The report states that starting April 1, customers will have the option to either continue with their current arrangement, renew their existing license, update it, or switch to the new offers available.
As for the pricing, Reuters notes:
For new commercial customers, prices for Office without Teams range from $7.75 to $54.75 depending on the product while Teams Standalone will cost $5.25. The figures may vary by country and currency. The company did not disclose prices for current packaged products.
The decision comes after the European Commission (EC) opened a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams software with the Office productivity suite last year.
However, the EC first received a complaint against Microsoft regarding its bundling of Teams with Microsoft 365 from one of Teams" competitors, Slack, over three years ago. Slack contended that packaging the products together provides Microsoft with an unfair advantage.
Microsoft has yet to publicly announce the changes regarding the unbundling of Teams officially.