Microsoft Teams decouples from Office 365 suite globally

For those not keen on Microsoft Teams, help is in hand – European Union requirements to unbundle the software from Office 365 will be implemented globally. During the pandemic lockdowns, Microsoft hoped Teams would zoom past competing collaboration tools. But in 2020, Slack complained that bundling Teams into Office 365 …

[cyberdemon]

Price reductions?

Or just an extra mug's tax for all the plebs stuck with Teams entrenched into their organisations?

Too little, too late indeed.. I would prefer to see Borkzilla unbundled from itself. Split Office 355, Teams, LinkedIn, GitHub and Windows into separate companies.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Price reductions?

Don't forget about spinning Azure out into a separate company. OneDrive, too. And SQL Server while we're at it.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Price reductions?

It does annoy me that I can't use a rival cloud provider with Word as seamlessly as I can use OneDrive. Surely that's a competition issue too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Word and Cloud

Autosave used to work locally. These days and even with the standalone version of word, it insists on saving to a OnDrive system.

There goes working off-line.

FSCK Microsoft.

[hitmouse]

Re: Word and Cloud

RTFM

[ITMA]

Re: Word and Cloud

Or put in more words:

Go to the File menu/tab in Word, go to Options in the bottom left.

In the box that appears find "Save" on the left and click on it. There you will find a whole bunch of options to control where it saves to including turning Autosave to the cloud OFF (at the top of the pane on the right in the save options).

[hitmouse]

Re: Price reductions?

Dropbox integrates with Office. There is a long-published interface for cloud storage providers to take up if they wish.

[sedregj]

Re: Price reductions?

"There is a long-published interface for cloud storage providers to take up if they wish."

Link please

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Price reductions?

Although knowing Microsoft, that interface changes completely every two years and isn't backwards compatible.

(Gives side eye to Windows Phone documentation...)

[m4r35n357]

So EU can't push mighty US megacorps around?

But you moaners will also get the benefits of this regulation.

You're welcome!

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

"The move leaves users with the option to carry on as normal, remove Teams from licenses and enjoy a small discount, or buy it as a standalone product."

You mean there is an actual discount... it's not the same price? Or even more expensive? I'm sure there must be much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Redmond of late.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the moment it looks like Teams Essentials (which I presume is the nearest equivalent to what's bundled) is £39.60/year/license. I can't currently see a non-Teams equivalent to our Microsoft 365 Business Premium bundle. There are Microsoft 365 plans "without Audio Conferencing" which are the same price as those with it - it's not clear though if that is a Teams distinction or something else. So, MS licensing as clear as mud, as usual.

[Pascal Monett]

"The Coalition for Fair Software [..] backed by Google and AWS"

This kind of shenanigans should be illegal.

It is morally dishonest to front a so-called non-profit group for the sole purpose of destroying your competitor.

[Cruachan]

Re: "The Coalition for Fair Software [..] backed by Google and AWS"

Said the same thing the other week on the thread about Apple being sued for antitrust violations. It's a good thing that the companies are being picked up for doing it, but the fact that 2 out of 3 of Microsoft, Apple and Google are ganging up on the third over antitrust is about as hypocritical as it gets.

[m4r35n357]

Re: "The Coalition for Fair Software [..] backed by Google and AWS"

s/morally dishonest/standard practice/g

[doublerot13]

Re: "The Coalition for Fair Software [..] backed by Google and AWS"

...not as morally bad as bundling sub-standard Teams to grab marketshare from Slack, which is far superior. No one chooses Teams, it's just bundled for free.

[Bebu]

Shame that...

the europeans didn't mandate the cost of a teams license plus the cost of the office(sans teams) licence had to be greater than the highest of a slack, zoom etc license plus office(sans teams) license. A bit of positive punishment. ;)

Personally teams, slack, zoom the rest of that scurvy crew can be consigned to the deep as a massive waste of time and productivity drain much worse than enduring 100 powerpoint slides.

Actually office suites in general could be turfed overboard too.

I suspect the vast majority of licenses are only used for word processing; spreadsheets are beyond the ken of most users and of those the ones that think otherwise are a danger to themselves and others.

Presentation tools like powerpoint are inherently lethal.

The DTP tools basically only produce visual emetics or cathartics.

The dumbed down (and usually dodgy) database applications have already wrought enough havoc that consigning them to oblivion would be to everyone's benefit.

The prospect of adding AI assisted user coded applications (low code) to this nightmare is the hellish prospect of superadditive combination of artificial and natural imbecility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Shame that...

Use case varies. I only use Excel, can't abide word. Our coloured pencil dept inflicts PowerPoint presentations on us at monthly meetings.

Agree on Access. It needs to be cast down into the depths of heck.

[Strahd Ivarius]

what about the bundling

of Windows and Office and Intune in M365 offers?

[Cloudy Day]

I wonder

…. If they will change the license terms for the ‘decoupled’ Teams version so that it can run on VMs in GCP, AWS and Alibaba. If they don’t, then this announcement is just lipstick on a pig.

[Andrew Barr]

Naming of Suites

MS should release an all-inclusive license and call it the "Anti-Competitive license but you want all our stuff"

[Cucumber C Face]

Will the real Teams please stand up

Does this mean we will no longer be 'entertained' by quasi-randomised permutations of however many Microsoft Accounts you have versus

Teams Classic (Work or school); 'New' Teams and Teams 'free' versions - each inevitably downloading a service pack when the meeting is due?

[mikus]

Silly Microsofties always see Team is some kinds of gift of cheapness vs. say Slack, but there are hidden costs.

-Teams group chats are as barren as catholic confession stands these days.-

-Everyone is afraid to be logged saying something bad, so they say nothing. Nothing.

-When you do use it, it's always just a little bit broken for inexplicable reasons, regardless the client platform.

-Abandoning 3rd parties like Mac and Linux to web put them as a less than 3rd class citizen alienate an already hateful crowd everywhere.

Now I wonder the true cost of using the platform decoupled from ambiguity, let us finally have a real cost of using sub-standard "freemium" services where only sacrificing human souls to converse.