Microsoft will no longer include Microsoft Teams in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 for its primary business customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland as of Oct. 1, and will drop the price of the productivity suites to reflect the change.
The move is one of three changes announced by the company Thursday morning, following the European Commission’s announcement in July that it was opening a formal investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of the communication and collaboration software into its business software suites.
Microsoft also outlined new steps to help rivals integrate their software and services into Microsoft 365 and Office 365; and promised to offer a new mechanism for competing apps and services to host Office web applications, ultimately making it easier for their users to access Microsoft Office files.
The EU investigation, sparked by a Slack complaint three years earlier, is based on concerns that “Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites,” the European Commission said at the time.
Microsoft is making the changes on its own, based on “extensive and constructive discussions with the European Commission,” wrote Nanna-Louise Linde, the company’s vice president of European Government Affairs, in a post Thursday.
“We do this not with the sense that this will necessarily resolve all concerns, whether from the Commission or our competitors, but we believe this is a constructive step that can start to lead to immediate and meaningful changes in the market,” Linde wrote.
Among other considerations, European regulators want to ensure that Microsoft customers can choose a version of the company’s business software suites without Teams at a lower price than they pay for the full bundle, Linde wrote.
More details on the changes:
- The unbundled versions will be €2 less per month or €24 less per year, and Teams will be available separately for €5 per month or €60 per year.
- Microsoft said the changes will apply to its “core enterprise customers, which represent most of our commercial business in the EEA and Switzerland.”
- Existing enterprise customers will be able to keep their current suites with Teams, or switch to the unbundled version.
- Microsoft will offer versions of its suites for small businesses and individual workers both with and without Teams.
