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Microsoft breaks up the Teams and Office apps worldwide, following EU split

various groups– Changes might conserve a little cash for individuals who desire Office apps without Teams.

Andrew Cunningham – Updated Apr 1, 2024 8:12 pm UTC

Expand/ Teams is being decoupled from the other Office apps worldwide, 6 months after Microsoft did the exact same thing for the EU.

Microsoft/Andrew Cunningham

Months after unbundling the apps in the European Union, Microsoft is taking the Office and Teams separation worldwide. Reuters reports that Microsoft will start offering Teams and the other Microsoft 365 apps to brand-new industrial clients as different items with different cost starting today.

“To guarantee clearness for our consumers, we are extending the actions we took in 2015 to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to consumers worldwide,” a Microsoft representative informed Ars. “Doing so likewise addresses feedback from the European Commission by offering international business more versatility when they wish to standardize their buying throughout locations.”

The unbundling is a win for other group interaction apps like Slack and videoconferencing apps like Zoom, both of which precede Teams however have not had the advantages of the Office apps’ big recognized user base.

The separation follows an EU regulative examination that began in July of 2023, practically precisely 3 years after Slack at first submitted a problem declaring that Microsoft was “abusing its market supremacy to snuff out competitors in breach of European Union competitors law.”

In August of 2023, Microsoft revealed that it would be unbundling the apps in the EU and Switzerland in October. Bloomberg reported in September that Zoom had actually met EU and United States Federal Trade Commission regulators about Microsoft, even more ratcheting up regulative pressure on Microsoft.

In October, Microsoft European Government Affairs VP Nanna-Louise Linde explained the unbundling and other relocations as “proactive modifications that we hope will begin to deal with these issues in a significant method,” though the EU examination is continuous, and the business might yet be fined. Linde likewise composed that Microsoft would enable third-party apps like Zoom and Slack to incorporate more deeply with the Office apps which it would “make it possible for third-party options to host Office web applications.”

Microsoft has actually installed an article detailing its brand-new prices structure here– in the meantime, the modifications just impact the Microsoft 365 prepare for business, Enterprise, and Frontline variations of Microsoft 365. Customer, Academic, United States Government, and Nonprofit editions of Microsoft 365 aren’t altering today and will still bundle Teams as they did in the past.

Existing Office/Microsoft 365 Enterprise consumers who wish to keep utilizing the Office apps and Teams together can continue to sign up for both at their present rates. New customers to the Enterprise variations of Microsoft 365/Office 365 can pay $5.25 per user each month for Teams, whether they’re purchasing Teams as standalone software application or including it on top of a Teams-free Office/Microsoft 365 membership.

For business and Frontline Microsoft 365 variations,

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