I posted at the end of July about the new EU probe into Microsoft’s practice of bundling Teams with Office 365 and now, just four or so weeks later, Microsoft have announced a significant change for customers in the EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland.
Microsoft state these changes have 2 aims:
- To enable organisations to buy Office/Microsoft 365 without Teams – and pay less
- To improve interoperation between rival communication/collaboration products
Licensing changes
From October 1st, 2023 the “Teams Included” Enterprise O/M 365 suites in the EEA and Switzerland will be discontinued. This means the suites will still be available, just without Teams included, and they will be €2 per user per month cheaper.
Net new customers will need to buy 2 separate SKUs: the EEA O/M365 SKU and the separate Teams SKU…which will cost €5 per user per month.
Existing customers can choose to stay with the Teams inclusive suite and renew/add seats or choose to switch to the new offering at anniversary/renewal.
The old and new F SKUs and Business SKUs will co-exist, meaning organisations can choose to buy the with or without Teams licenses.
Interoperability changes
Microsoft will provide additional information and resources around APIs and extensibility to 3rd party providers and ISVs. They will also “develop a new method for hosting the Office web applications within competing apps and services much like Microsoft accomplishes in Teams“
Microsoft links
You can see the full announcement here and more licensing details here.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 