The most important feature in office software may be the one most suites bury: the ability to leave.
On October 16, 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority proposed designating Microsoft as having Strategic Market Status in its business-software ecosystem. The finding is provisional, consultation remains open, and the designation itself would not establish wrongdoing. Even so, the case puts a useful principle on the table: software that runs a modern organization should be judged not only by how smoothly it pulls customers in, but also by how safely it lets them move out.
The scale explains why this is bigger than an ordinary software dispute. The CMA says Microsoft products support more than one million UK businesses and public-sector organizations and reach roughly 20 million monthly users. Its investigation spans five connected areas: PC operating systems, productivity suites, security software, server operating systems and relational database-management systems. Those are not optional workplace accessories. Together, they are operating infrastructure.
Integration is a benefit—and a dependency
There is a good reason organizations buy an integrated suite. A common identity system, familiar administration tools and a single support relationship can reduce deployment work. Staff already know the applications. Procurement is simpler. Bundles can be cheaper than buying every component separately. Microsoft has argued that these efficiencies are real, and it is right about that.
The problem begins when a convenience becomes a structural dependency. An organization may want to replace one tool while keeping the rest of its environment. It may find that the alternative duplicates a licence already inside a bundle, loses a wider discount, cannot reach the same data through equivalent interfaces or requires a costly identity and security redesign. None of those barriers has to look like a locked door. A hundred small frictions can be just as effective.
That is the heart of the CMA’s provisional concern. The regulator says switching costs, retraining, operational risk and Microsoft’s control over important technical interfaces can weaken customers’ practical freedom to choose. Stakeholder submissions summarized in the CMA’s roadmap of possible interventions also describe uneven access to Microsoft 365 data and Graph APIs. Those complaints are not final findings, and the roadmap is not an order. They are still a warning about what happens when a software suite becomes the floor beneath everyone’s desks.
Exit costs are a product-design choice
Once software becomes infrastructure, reversibility should be treated as a reliability feature. Backups matter because systems fail. Portability matters because commercial relationships, security needs and strategic priorities change. A customer that can leave is not a customer being underserved; it is a customer whose continued business must be earned.
What “built for exit” should mean
A credible right to exit would not require every vendor to make every product interchangeable. It would require the basic paths between systems to be honest, predictable and usable. At minimum, large business-software platforms should provide:
- complete, documented exports that preserve structure, permissions and audit history;
- stable APIs available to competing tools on materially equivalent terms;
- clear deprecation windows and migration documentation before interfaces change;
- licensing that does not make a rival product uneconomic merely because a bundle already includes an incumbent option;
- identity and security controls that can span providers without forcing a wholesale rebuild; and
- reversible migration plans that let customers test, roll back and run mixed environments safely.
AI raises the stakes
AI assistants will sit across email, meetings, files, security alerts and databases. The more context they accumulate, the harder they become to replace unless that context can travel.
That makes portability an institutional-resilience issue. Governments, hospitals, schools and businesses should be able to combine the best tools, change suppliers after a security failure, or avoid concentrating every critical workflow in one vendor. The CMA notes that Microsoft and Amazon have already taken steps in cloud services, including removing some data-transfer fees and creating a route for interoperability requests. That progress is worth recognizing. It also shows that supposedly fixed switching costs can move when customers and regulators insist.
The suite should have to keep winning
The CMA is accepting responses to its proposed decision until November 13, 2026, and expects a final designation decision by February 13, 2027. Whatever it ultimately decides about Microsoft, the broader standard should survive the case.
Good integration deserves to win customers. It should not need to trap them. Office software has become infrastructure, and infrastructure should come with a map of the exits.
