Not banned outright, but several national security frameworks effectively prohibit its use for sensitive communications. France's ANSSI, Germany's BSI, and several Gulf national cybersecurity authorities have issued guidance that US-hosted platforms with CLOUD Act exposure cannot be used for classified or sensitive-but-unclassified government communications. The practical effect is the same: Microsoft Teams cannot be used where it matters most.

No. Microsoft's EU Data Boundary is a commercial commitment to store and process EU data within EU borders. It does not — and legally cannot — override the CLOUD Act, which is US federal law. The European Data Protection Board has explicitly stated that contractual protections cannot substitute for the legal guarantees that CLOUD Act exposure undermines. Your data may sit in Frankfurt but it remains legally reachable by US authorities.

Microsoft Teams is used by GDPR-regulated organisations but it is not inherently GDPR compliant in all use cases. Data stored on Azure remains subject to US CLOUD Act authority, which the European Data Protection Board has identified as structurally incompatible with GDPR Article 46 transfer requirements. Microsoft's standard Data Processing Addendum does not resolve this conflict. Organisations relying solely on Teams for sensitive communications carry residual GDPR exposure they cannot contractually eliminate.

No — and Microsoft has confirmed this will not change. Teams is exclusively cloud-hosted on Azure. There is no on-premise deployment option. Organisations that were running Skype for Business Server on-premise and expected a migration path to Teams discovered this in 2021 when Microsoft ended Skype for Business Server mainstream support. RealTyme supports on-premise, private cloud, and Swiss cloud hosting with full data ownership.

No. RealTyme is designed to operate alongside existing IT infrastructure. Many organisations deploy RealTyme as their sovereign communication layer for sensitive conversations, leadership communications, and regulated workflows — while retaining M365 for general productivity. You do not need to migrate email, documents, or other systems to benefit from RealTyme's sovereignty.

Teams is architecturally dependent on Azure AD for identity, OneDrive and SharePoint for storage, and M365 licensing to function. Your communication infrastructure, identity infrastructure, and document infrastructure are all controlled by a single US commercial vendor. Sovereignty frameworks across the EU, Africa, and the Gulf explicitly identify this kind of single-vendor dependency as a strategic risk — not a convenience trade-off.

Microsoft Teams is entirely proprietary — its codebase, encryption implementation, and AI logic are closed and unauditable. For governments and regulated organisations, the ability to independently verify what a platform does with your data is a security requirement. RealTyme addresses this through independent third-party security audits rather than relying on self-reported assurances.