The world’s biggest software company, Microsoft, has announced it is selling its Teams Chat and Video App separately from its Office product.
A possible EU antitrust fine was avoided when the company revealed this on Monday, six months after separating the two products in Europe.
Reuters reports that the European Commission has been looking into Microsoft’s connection between Office and Teams since 2020, when Slack, a rival workspace messaging app owned by Salesforce, filed a complaint.
Teams, a free add-on to Office 365 that came out in 2017 and replaced Skype for Business, became very popular during the pandemic, partly because it could perform videoconferencing.
Taking Teams out of Office 365
Microsoft began selling the two products separately in the EU and Switzerland on August 31, 2016, after competitors said that putting them in the same box gave Microsoft an unfair edge.
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A Microsoft representative told Reuters, “To make things clear for our customers, we are expanding the steps we took last year to separate Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers worldwide.”
“This also responds to comments from the European Commission by giving multinational companies more options when they want to standardise their buying across regions,” the spokesperson said.
Understanding Microsoft’s Global Team Sales Separation from Office Products
Microsoft’s decision to market Teams separately from Office worldwide underscores how crucial remote teamwork capabilities are in the business. More people work from home, making teams essential for communication, teamwork, and efficiency.
Microsoft recognised Teams’ usefulness for businesses by making it a separate tool from Office. It allows firms to adapt their software to match their needs, saving money.
Selling Teams alone helps Microsoft develop its business software business. Businesses use all-in-one technologies like Teams to enable distributed teams to connect and collaborate as working from home becomes increasingly frequent.
Separating Teams from Office helps Microsoft reach more people. Not many firms require the whole Office app suite, but they desire a powerful collaboration platform.
This strategy also illustrates Microsoft’s commitment to innovation and adaptability to client needs. The company understands the modern workplace and is devoted to creating solutions for organisations worldwide by offering Teams as a stand-alone solution.
Microsoft’s decision to sell Teams separately from Office products worldwide shows that the company understands Teams’ importance in modern workplaces, wants to grow in the enterprise software market, and is committed to meeting customer needs in a changing business world.
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Updates to Microsoft 365
Microsoft wrote on its blog that it was releasing new commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that do not include Teams in places other than the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. It also released a new offering for Enterprise users in those places that are separate from Teams.
Customers can keep their current licencing deal starting April 1, or they can repeat, update, or switch to one of the new deals.
Office without Teams costs between $7.75 and $54.75 for new business customers, based on the product. Teams Standalone costs $5.25. Different countries and currencies may have different numbers. The business didn’t say how much its present packaged goods cost.
According to Reuters, industry sources say that Microsoft’s efforts to separate its services may not be enough to protect the company from EU antitrust charges. These charges will likely be sent to the company in the coming months, as competitors have been critical of the high fees and their messaging services’ ability to work with Office Web Applications.
