Microsoft Decouples Teams From its Office 365 Commercial Plans Globally to “Ensure Clarity”

Following regulatory scrutiny, Microsoft agreed last year to unbundle Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial plans in the EU and Switzerland. If the software giant is still being scrutinized by the EU Commission regarding its commercial practices, Microsoft announced today that it’s extending the unbundling change it made in the EU and Switzerland to the US and the rest of the world.

“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 told Reuters. “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 Reuters report refers to a Microsoft blog post that doesn’t appear to be live as of this writing, but here’s what’s changing for commercial customers:

• Microsoft is now offering commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscriptions without Teams in the rest of the world, with prices ranging from $7.75 per user per month to $54.75 in the US.
• Microsoft Teams is also now available as a standalone subscription outside of the EU and Switzerland, and it’s priced at $5.25 per user per month in the US.
• Existing customers can either stay on their current Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan with Teams or switch to one of the new plans that don’t include Teams.

Last year, Microsoft decided to unbundle Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers in the EU after the EU Commission opened a formal investigation into the company’s commercial practices. This investigation followed an antitrust complaint from Teams competitor Slack, which accused Microsoft of threatening competitors by bundling Teams, a “weak copycat product,” with its popular Office suite. In August, the company said that it was changing its business practices following extensive discussions with the EU Commission. “We recognize our responsibility as a major technology provider to support a healthy competitive environment,” Nanna-Louise Linde, Vice President, Microsoft European Government Affairs said at the time.

Well, it took nearly six months for the company to realize that the rest of the world may also deserve the same changes. And this is definitely an interesting development after the EU’s Digital Markets Act recently forced Microsoft, Apple, and other big tech companies to make some changes to their software platforms to better support competition and respect consumer choice.