Microsoft to Separate Teams and Office Globally Amid Antitrust Scrutiny

Microsoft will promote its chat and video app Teams individually from its Office product globally, the US tech large stated on Monday, six months after it unbundled the 2 merchandise in Europe in a bid to avert a potential EU antitrust tremendous.

The European Fee has been investigating Microsoft’s tying of Workplace and Groups since a 2020 criticism by Salesforce-owned competing workspace messaging app Slack.

Groups, which was added to Workplace 365 in 2017 free of charge, subsequently changed Skype for Enterprise and have become standard throughout the pandemic due partially to its video conferencing.

Rivals, nonetheless, stated packaging the merchandise collectively offers Microsoft an unfair benefit. The corporate began promoting the 2 merchandise individually within the EU and Switzerland on August 31 final yr.

“To make sure readability for our clients, we’re extending the steps we took final yr to unbundle Groups from M365 and O365 within the European Financial Space and Switzerland to clients globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson stated.

“Doing so additionally addresses suggestions from the European Fee by offering multinational corporations extra flexibility after they wish to standardise their buying throughout geographies.”

Microsoft stated in a blogpost that it was introducing a brand new lineup of business Microsoft 365 and Workplace 365 suites that don’t embrace Groups in areas exterior the EEA (European Financial Space) and Switzerland, and in addition a brand new standalone Groups providing for Enterprise clients in these areas.

Beginning April 1, clients can both proceed with their present licensing deal, renew, replace or swap to the brand new provides.

For brand new industrial clients, costs for Workplace with out Groups vary from $7.75 to $54.75 (roughly from Rs. 646 to Rs. 4,566) relying on the product whereas Groups Standalone will value $5.25 (roughly Rs. 437). The figures might fluctuate by nation and foreign money. The corporate didn’t disclose costs for present packaged merchandise.

Microsoft’s unbundling might not be sufficient to stave off EU antitrust fees which is able to doubtless be despatched to the corporate within the coming months as rivals criticise the extent of the charges and the power of their messaging providers to perform with Workplace Net Functions in their very own providers, sources stated.

Microsoft, which has racked up EUR 2.2 billion ($2.4 billion or roughly Rs. 20,016 crore) in EU antitrust fines prior to now decade for tying or bundling two or extra merchandise collectively, dangers a tremendous of as a lot as 10 % of its international annual turnover if discovered responsible of antitrust breaches.

© Thomson Reuters 2024