Microsoft renaming Office 365 to Microsoft 365, bringing Teams to everyone

Microsoft is making some big changes to its Office software Monday, with the announcement that the company is changing the suite’s name and adding major chat features for the average consumer. The changes come at a time when such apps are more important than ever as the coronavirus outbreak forces people to remain in their homes and away from family and friends.

Starting April 21, Office 365 will be called Microsoft 365, a move that illustrates the company’s desire to shed the stuffy image of the Office branding, and position it as a people first suite of apps.

And the most significant change in that respect is the inclusion of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Teams software for everyday consumers. Until now, Teams has been primarily designed as a communication app for large and small organizations, similar to Slack (WORK).

Pricing for the service will remain the same: $6.99 a month for a single subscription, and $9.99 for a family subscription for up to 6 people.

Teams has seen significant growth over the last year, with Microsoft announcing the app had exploded in popularity from 20 million business users in November to 44 million in April. Part of that bump, about 12 million users, joined the service between March 11 and March 18 as more people around the world began working from home due to coronavirus lockdowns.

Microsoft’s move to bring more functionality to its productivity suite of apps comes as the company’s software is forced to contend with ever more rivals from across the spectrum ranging from Google to Slack.

Those rivals, like Microsoft, have seen similar increases in use as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

Liat Ben-Zur, Microsoft CVP of consumer and Edge and Bing marketing, told Yahoo Finance that the company’s decision to make Teams more broadly available came after consumers said they wanted a single app to be able to chat with family and friends, make plans, access their calendars, and share files rather than dealing with multiple disparate apps.

:story: Yahoo Finance