REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 12, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today announced several universities and institutions of higher learning have recently signed on to Microsoft Live@edu, signifying continued worldwide growth of this service. With enhanced collaboration and communications features, Live@edu is a no-charge suite that enhances student productivity in both the classroom and their personal lives. In addition, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Exchange Labs, which currently delivers rich e-mail functionality as a service to 3.5 million Live@edu users, will be renamed Outlook Live. The Outlook Live service will also be extended to support faculty and staff members at no charge.
“Live@edu’s impressive growth trajectory demonstrates that it’s an attractive offering with institutions of higher learning,” said Anna Kinney, senior product manager for Microsoft Live@edu. “Today’s new enhancements and extension to include faculty and staff members will make Live@edu even more compelling for today’s budget-conscious campuses.”
Booming Enrollment
The growth in universities, colleges and schools embracing Live@edu includes the following recent landmark customer wins:
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University of Queensland. The university has created 83,000 accounts on Live@edu for student use and plans to create an additional 100,000 accounts for use by alumni in the near future.
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Ohio State University. The U.S.’s largest public university, counting more than 61,000 students.
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Ministry of Education of Peru. Paving the way for the activation of up to 4 million students and 150,000 teachers on Live@edu.
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University of New South Wales. Recognized as one of Australia’s leading teaching and research institutions with more than 44,500 students and 6,000 faculty members.
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University of Ulster. One of the largest universities in Ireland with more than 25,000 students, 1,100 of them studying fully online from over 55 different countries.
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Government of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Live@edu will be made available to more than 6 million students of the state.
At the University of Queensland, students, faculty members and administrators are using Live@edu to augment instruction, improve communications and foster greater collaboration.
“It’s been an excellent initiative by Microsoft to provide this free service for our students and alumni,” said Nick Tate, director of Information Technology Services at University of Queensland. “Because Live@edu integrates well with our existing systems and harnesses technology people already know, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and we’ve been extremely pleased with the results so far.”
New Web-Based E-Mail Service for Students
Outlook Live will incorporate a variety of new features, including the following:
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Multibrowser support. Access e-mail over the Web using Windows Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.
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Enhanced conversation view. Organize e-mail in a new way that cuts down on unnecessary inbox clutter by combining multiple e-mails into a single conversation.
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Integrated instant messaging and presence. Access communications right at your fingertips in a single interface that marries e-mail and instant messaging from Windows Live Messenger or Microsoft Office Communicator.
Customers can see the new features in this video at http://edge.technet.com/Media/Introducing-Outlook-Live.
In his senior year at the University of Ulster, Jonathan Synnott, a computer science student, switches seamlessly among the different tools constituting Live@edu — using Outlook Live beta to coordinate fieldwork projects, Windows Live Messenger to exchange quick communications about assignments, Microsoft Office Live Workspace as a security-enhanced hub for sharing and collaborating on documents for group study projects, and Windows Live SkyDrive to store term papers.
“Live@edu allows me to bring into the classroom the tools I use to connect with my friends,” Synnott said. “With Live@edu, I can stay in touch with my classmates and professors and access my work virtually wherever I am and while on the go.”
Cool for School
By signing up for Live@edu, students, faculty and staff members gain instant access to a comprehensive suite of tools, including Outlook Live for their e-mail needs, Office Live Workspace to access their documents online and share and collaborate with others, Windows Live Messenger to interact in near-real time, and SkyDrive for 25 GB of online data storage space. Live@edu works across the range of devices students already use, giving them ubiquitous access to their coursework and powerful communications and collaboration tools. And because it is designed to work with campuses’ existing IT infrastructure, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Live@edu is a smarter choice compared with other free educational offerings. This enables institutions to provide students, faculty and staff members, and alumni with the tools they need while continuing to minimizing their overhead costs — an imperative in today’s economic climate.
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