Microsoft to decouple Teams from Office in the EU

In response to an EU Commission anti-trust probe, Microsoft has announced plans to decouple Teams from Office in the near future. Microsoft will also make it easier for other companies — for example, Zoom and Slack, which is owned by Salesforce — to integrate their products with Microsoft 365, the new name for Microsoft 365.

The company plans to charge enterprise customers €2 less per month for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 — which include Word, Excel and Outlook among other apps — to reflect the absence of the popular Teams app.

In their blog post on the subject, Microsoft stresses that they are taking this measure proactively in response to the Commission’s investigation being launched and that they will continue to act in accordance with any decisions and measures the EU agrees upon.

For users of Teams, no practical changes

Despite the changes being put in place to ostensibly open use of Microsoft Office to competing system solutions, the simple matter is that a majority of customers are likely to remain with the platform they are already familiar with. Considering Microsoft Teams’ supermajority share of the market, this means that Teams will remain the dominant platform even as the market opens up and new antitrust measures come into play.

This also means that for organizations, keeping their Microsoft Teams secured will continue to be a major consideration moving forward. Keeping Microsoft Teams means necessarily also continuing to do business over the platform, using it to conduct critical operations and generating business data. As such, securing this communication stream continues to be a concern organizations have to address.

Archive, backup and protect your communication streams with contentACCESS

One of the key layers of protection for any business is placing critical data within an archive or backup. The ability to keep your communication isolated from the live system, preserved against both accidental alterations and external or internal threats, is crucial to ensuring business continuity.

Our contentACCESS solution provides a comprehensive solution to archiving your Microsoft Teams chats. Ensure your business communications remain safe and intact as well as compliant with legal retention requirements – as well as remaining accessible for your employees to reference, thanks to contentACCESS’ straightforward democratized access and full-text search options.

Is your company prepared to futureproof your communication channel security? Contact our company and our team of specialists for a free consultation where we can go over how your business can best leverage our company’s years of experience and expertise.

 

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by Matúš Koronthály