Microsoft to globally unbundle Teams from Microsoft, Office 365 suites

Tech giant Microsoft will globally unbundle Teams—its communication and collaboration product—from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites globally.

This follows the Windows maker’s announcement to unbundle Teams in the European Economic Area and Switzerland in August last year, subsequent to the European Commission opening an investigation into potential anti-competitive practices by Microsoft concerning Teams.

In July 2023, the European Commission opened a formal investigation to assess whether Microsoft may have breached the European Union's competition rules by tying or bundling Teams to its popular suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

Teams, a cloud-based communication and collaboration tool, offers functionalities such as messaging, calling, video meetings, and file sharing and brings together Microsoft’s and third-party workplace tools and other applications.

In July 2020, Slack Technologies, owned by Salesforce and creator of the cloud-based team communication platform ‘Slack’, submitted a complaint against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft illegally tied Teams to its dominant productivity suites.

The global unbundling of Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites was officially confirmed by a Microsoft spokesperson to Reuters, which was the first to report the development.

By taking this action, multinational corporations gain increased flexibility in their efforts to standardise purchasing practices across different regions, thereby addressing feedback from the European Commission, the spokesperson noted.