Budapest, 08 September 2014 – Microsoft provides cutting-edge cloud-based e-mail service, internal institutional e-mail addresses with 50 gigabytes of storage and 1 terabyte of personal storage space to 30.000 students at the University of Debrecen.
The University of Debrecen is one of the biggest universities in Hungary with 15 faculty departments and is one of the country’s five research universities. The 30.000 students had no institutional e-mail addresses and had to use providers such as freemail, gmail and citromail to communicate with their peers and professors. But these e-mail addresses proved to be unsafe. Also, without an institutional email address, the students were not able to take advantage of the increasing number of student offers from companies in the Debrecen region. Therefore, the University of Debrecen decided to implement a solution that helps them increase efficiency and security. They found Office 365 to be the ideal fit.
“Besides security, another important criteria was that the IT operation will be simplified and that there was no need to deploy a new server infrastructure. 30.000 students is a large number, like the population of a smaller city. We realized that Microsoft Office 365 meets these criteria and in addition is the most cost effective solution”- says Attila Tóth, Chief Information Officer of the University of Debrecen.
Further to the internal correspondence of the university, Microsoft also offers access to other services of Office 365. SharePoint provides a common platform for students to share useful documents of their curriculum. The file sharing service is a great tool in supporting teaching also. Documents of interest can be used by a multitude of users and can be easily shared between teachers and students for viewing or collaboration. Lync, a video conference service allows the delivery of lectures or presentations to numerous people online. Moreover, calls can be recorded to make preparations for exams a smoother process. The distance barrier is eliminated; students and teachers can cooperate from any location in international projects and thus strengthen their academic outreach.
“The country’s success and competitiveness depends on the young and well-educated people. We believe that by offering cutting-edge technology to the most prestigious Hungarian universities, we contribute to Hungary’s success” – said Ádám Merényi, Education Lead of Microsoft Hungary.
“A great advantage of or collaboration is, that the students’ personal data will be stored on the university’s servers” – added Ádám Merényi. This is possible by linking Microsoft’s technologies with the user identification system that was already in use by the university.
Office 365 is one of the most modern services in the world and the students of the University of Debrecen can already use it. When enrolling at the university, freshmen will immediately receive institutional e-mail addresses as their first tie to the larger academic community.
The collaboration between the University of Debrecen and Microsoft will not end here: Microsoft professionals will hold trainings for students on how to use these new technologies most effectively. The students will also learn how to use applications based on cloud technology in their learning and in the international scientific life. Microsoft Hungary collaborates with a number of other universities and plans similar innovative collaborations.
Further information:
Kristóf Judit, Microsoft Magyarország
- +36 20 578 9585
- [email protected]
Csóti Janka, Uniomedia Communications
- +36 70 387 4645
- [email protected]
