Microsoft’s Teams pledges satisfy EU commission
The European Commission has accepted commitments from Microsoft to address competition concerns linked to its popular Teams platform.
Teams is a cloud-based communication and collaboration tool that offers services such as messaging, calling, video meetings, and file sharing.
The commission had begun an investigation into Teams in 2023 due to its concerns that Microsoft was breaching EU competition rules by tying the product to applications included in its suites for businesses, Office 365 and Microsoft 365.
After the EU probe began, the software giant had made changes to the way it distributed Teams, but the commission had deemed them insufficient.
Reduced price
In a statement today (12 September), the EU body said that Microsoft’s fresh commitments, which would be legally binding, had addressed its concerns.
Under the pledges, Microsoft will:
- Make available versions of its product suites without Teams and at a reduced price,
- Allow customers with long-term licences to switch to suites without Teams,
- Provide interoperability for key functionalities between communication and collaboration tools that compete with Teams and certain Microsoft products, and
- Allow customers to move their data out of Teams to facilitate the use of competing solutions.
The commission said that the measures would open up the market for other providers of communication and collaboration tools in Europe.
Firms ‘rely on’ video-conferencing
The commitments offered by Microsoft will remain in force for seven years, except for the commitments related to interoperability and data portability, which will remain in force for ten years.
“Organisations big and small across Europe and around the world rely heavily on video-conferencing, chat and collaboration tools, especially since the coronavirus pandemic,” said competition commissioner Teresa Ribera.
“With today’s decision, we make binding for seven years or more Microsoft’s commitments to put an end to its tying practices that may be preventing rivals from effectively competing with Teams,” she stated.