Microsoft OFFICE365 for EDUCATION!

Its official!

I’m excited about the announcement of Office365 for education, which represents the evolution of Live@edu, and provides a game-changing opportunity for education in cloud computing. Office 365 for education builds off of the great platform we’ve established with Live@edu to provide a better experience for communication, collaboration, and productivity tools for education institutions of all types…while saving costs and delivering a great connected experience for students and educators.

In addition to providing an Exchange Online, Outlook and Office Web Apps solution, we will be expanding the portfolio to include SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Office Professional Plus. Office 365 for education will include the same services available in Office 365 for enterprises…but specifically tailored to meet the needs of educators, students, and education partners. It will have the same uptime commitment, backed up by a service level agreement, as enterprises. You can learn more about the new offering here.

The cloud without compromise…introducing Office 365 for education

Microsoft in the CLOUD – OFFICE Web Based & Hosted – OFFICE 365

Being that Office is huge portion of Microsoft revenue – this is something that is a bit of surprise, but really they had no choice in the matter.  This is where the market and competition is taking everyone….

OFFICE 365 is the new name.

Educators – Watch out as there is an educational version of this coming out as well – Same product, just with educational pricing.  You should see this coming earlier next year.

What is Office 365, beyond the new release of BPOS, Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite? 

Office 365 includes a new SMB version of what’s currently called BPOS; an enterprise version of BPOS v2; a new government version of BPOS (which is currently known as BPOS Federal); and a refresh of the student/education-focused Live@Edu offering. All of these are supposed to be out by next year.

 Some great information from someone’s opinion I have always trusted – ZCNet – Mary-Jo Foley

Ten more tidbits on Microsoft’s new Office 365 cloud play

Related Articles

• Microsoft Office 365: Guide to a Slew of Versions, Prices (pcworld.com)
• Microsoft to offer hosted, subscription versions of Office (news.cnet.com)

Which CAMP are you in – LIVE@Edu or Google Apps?

Which one are you using, if you’re not are you thinking about it?  This is huge market for both companies and is very important as trends and habits start at this level.

The war to win over educational institutions for the cloud is getting heated. Productivity suite rivals Microsoft and Google are battling it out to see who can be the go-to provider for a cloud-based email platform for universities and colleges across the U.S. Google Apps, which currently has 8 million users, is slightly behind Microsoft’s 11 million users of Live@edu. But the race is still a close one considering that individual deployments can include hundreds of thousands of users.  FULL STORY

Love to hear what you’re using – if your planning or not planning and why?