I’m curious: why don’t you virtualize? You can have any environment you want, you can run them on any machine, and are probably a lot easier to run backups etc. on.

This is true, but it’s one of the ways MS weasels it’s way in. If you’re using teams with clients, then they likely have Outlook as their scheduling app, so you have to use it too, since it only works with itself. It’s a backdoor to get you into their trap and get more and more of your data tied up and expensive to migrate.