A few months after unbundling Microsoft Teams from its Office productivity suite in the European Union, Microsoft Corp. today implemented the change globally.

The move comes as the company’s go-to-market strategy for Teams faces scrutiny in the EU. It’s believed regional regulators could bring antitrust charges over the matter in the coming months.

Microsoft previously offered Teams, its flagship videoconferencing and messaging platform, as part of the Office 365 suite. The service was also included in Microsoft 365, a software bundle that combines Office 365 with other offerings including Windows licenses and cybersecurity tools. There was no way for customers to purchase the two software suites without Teams.

In mid-2020, Slack submitted an antitrust complaint to EU regulators over Microsoft’s product bundling practices. Germany-based videoconferencing provider Alfaview followed suit last July. Shortly after Alfaview’s complaint, the EU launched a probe to determine whether the fact that Teams is packaged together with other Microsoft products amounts to an unfair “distribution advantage.”

A few weeks after the investigation’s announcement, the company moved to revise its software distribution practices. Microsoft unbundled Teams from both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 in the European Economic Area, which includes the EU as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The changes also took effect in Switzerland.

The licensing update announced today mirrors the changes Microsoft rolled out in Europe last year.

Starting today, new customers can only purchase business versions of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 that don’t include Teams. The changes apply to nearly a dozen subscription tiers organized into three groups: Business, Enterprise and Frontline. Subscriptions in the last lineup are geared toward professionals who spend most of their workday away from a computer.

Monthly pricing for the new tiers ranges from $1.75 for the most inexpensive Frontline version of Microsoft 365 to $54.75 for the top-end E5 bundle. The latter offering combines Office 365 with multiple cybersecurity tools, the Power BI analytics platform and several other products. Teams, in turn, is now available as a standalone subscription.

Companies already subscribed to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 editions with Teams included may continue using them. According to Microsoft, existing customers can also add more seats to their plans and renew them. They will receive the option to switch to a subscription that doesn’t include Team when their existing contract expires or, in some cases, on the contract’s anniversary.

Microsoft said in a statement that the new licensing policy “addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies.”

Sources told Reuters that Microsoft’s changes likely won’t be enough to stave off antitrust charges in the EU. According to the tipsters, the charges could be brought within months. EU officials also launched antitrust investigations into several other tech giants recently to determine whether they comply with the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act.

Photo: Microsoft