Microsoft Agrees EU Fixes to Avoid Fine Over Teams Bundling

Microsoft avoids EU fine after Teams bundling complaint

The European Commission has accepted commitments from Microsoft that resolve competition concerns over bundling Microsoft Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The move follows a complaint by Slack and a multi-year scrutiny from EU regulators that began after the pandemic increased demand for collaboration tools.

The commitments spell out concrete changes aimed at opening the market for communication and collaboration services while protecting customers’ freedom to choose.

• Offer Office suites without Teams bundled and at a reduced price.
• Allow customers with long-term licenses to switch to suites that exclude Teams.
• Provide interoperability for key functionalities so competing communication and collaboration tools can work with Microsoft products.
• Allow customers to move their data out of Teams to facilitate adoption of competing solutions.

Most commitments will be enforced for seven years; interoperability and data portability commitments will last ten years. Microsoft previously unbundled Teams in Europe in 2023 and separated Teams as its own app globally last year, steps that anticipated regulatory pressure.

Teresa Ribera of the European Commission framed the decision as opening competition in a crucial market: businesses must be free to choose the communication and collaboration product that best suits their needs. For Slack, the outcome vindicates a long-running claim that bundling hurt competition.

Why this matters to IT and procurement teams: vendor bundling affects cost transparency, lock-in risk, and integration costs. Even when a suite offers convenience, organizations may prefer best-of-breed communication tools for specific workflows or regulatory reasons.

Practically, the commitments change the checklist for migration and procurement projects. Teams removal options and price adjustments can alter TCO models. Interoperability promises mean IT teams should test whether APIs, identity flows, calendaring, and presence signals work as expected with their chosen tools.

Organizations should take three immediate steps:

• Audit current Teams usage and data to quantify what must be exported and reconnected elsewhere.
• Validate promised interoperability by running pilot integrations for identity, messaging, and meetings.
• Recalculate licensing costs and consider longer-term vendor strategy to avoid repeated rework.

QuarkyByte’s approach is to combine technical validation with commercial modelling. We map data flows, run interoperability tests, and quantify migration effort so IT and procurement teams can compare true costs — not just sticker prices.

This settlement stops short of a fine but sets a long-term framework that will shape collaboration markets for years. For organizations weighing change, the new rules create an opening to rationalize tools, renegotiate contracts, and push for smoother cross-platform workflows.

If your team is evaluating whether to keep Teams, switch to another provider, or split workloads across tools, map the decision to measurable outcomes: integration time, user productivity, compliance risk, and license spend. That’s how the market benefits from better choice—and how organizations convert regulatory change into operational advantage.