The cloud without compromise…introducing Office 365 for education

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.

Office 365 works with the Office family of products that you're already familiar with and it also enables new experiences on the Web.  It creates an opportunity for schools to deploy technology more cost-effectively, more quickly, and manage technology advancements more easily. Why is this important?  The answer is twofold. 

First, we can move beyond a lot of the challenges that schools have struggled with…with regards to managing and paying for and optimizing around licenses… to create a broad, safe, and secure cloud environment for students and educators. But more importantly, Office 365 becomes a building block so schools can build a foundation that takes care of messaging, communication, collaboration, even storage, as well as provide richness with regards to productivity apps, their own resources, and partner applications…all tied together with identity that is managed centrally and cohesively across the experience…to create a holistic environment for students and educators to do real learning, not just use the cloud.

Secondly, one of the great things about this evolution with Live@edu is it increases the opportunity for partners who have already invested in core Microsoft technologies like Office, SharePoint, and Exchange, to deepen their connection to those products, as well as extend out the services they can provide for institutions at a low cost. Existing partners that build around applications for SharePoint for communication and collaboration, learning management systems, and even student information systems, can now extend the value of their solutions by integrating closely with Office 365 for education.

We also know that safety and security matters significantly in education, and it's something we take very seriously.  One of the reasons why we're excited about this product announcement is it reflects a need we recognized early on to evolve Live@edu from a consumer-based foundation on Hotmail to an enterprise foundation with Exchange.  This provides really two things.  One, we have increased management control and security for schools, and this will extend across the collaboration storage component of Office 365 so institutions can have regulate and secure documents and collaboration experiences students have. And two, we have an established pipeline for innovation that will be supported by our enterprise customers and with some of the most demanding and diverse business requirements throughout the world.

I'm excited about the present opportunities schools have with Live@edu and what Office 365 for education will provide schools in the future…but even more excited about the potential for partners and education leaders to create innovative uses on this to really take the experience to the next level for the more than 11 million students, faculty and staff worldwide that are using Live@edu today. We've enabled a rich experience across three screens…the phone, the browser and the Web…and created a flexible environment to really enable transformation and learning to happen.

The cloud is not compromise… we recognize the evolving needs of schools to consume resources in the cloud…and this will continue to expand as institutions want to create more integrated learning solutions. Live@edu’s evolution to Office 365 for education is cloud without compromise and in addition to offering a great set of resources for students and educators to stay connected and productive…it offers institutions a building block for broader innovation and transformation of learning environments with technology.