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Weekly #WhyMSFT Round-Up 6/29/2012

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Each week, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. Enjoy this week’s selections.

Microsoft Launches Office 365 Free for Education
The education edition, identical to the commercial version, is being offered free for schools, colleges, and universities, covering teachers, students, and administrators. It incorporates several of the features of Live@edu, along with additional tools found in the commercial version of Office 365, such as the Microsoft Office apps, Lync Online, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online.

Microsoft Announces Move into Cloud Services for Schools
Teachers can use it to build web pages for their courses, communicate with students, teach lessons virtually, and manage documents.

Microsoft Adds New Markets, Languages to Office Cloud Service
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is expanding the availability of its cloud-delivered Office 365 suite of software to 46 new markets and 11 additional languages, part of the company's efforts to better compete with Google Inc. (GOOG) and VMware Inc. (VMW).

Office 365 a Winner for Rental Franchise
An important reason for picking Office 365 rather than an alternative such as Google Apps was that staff was already familiar with Microsoft's user interface. The company thus enjoyed fewer change management or training issues.

Microsoft Office 365 wins Best Cloud Service Award at Cloud Computing World Series Awards
Having been judged by an independent panel of industry experts, the awards were presented at the 4th Annual Cloud Computing World Forum on the 12th June, Earls Court, London.

Microsoft Agrees to Acquire Yammer for $1.2 Billion in Cash
The software gives companies a private way to help employees communicate. For example, supermarket chain Supervalu Inc. (SVU) uses it to let sales people talk and share ideas.

Microsoft Unveils New 'Surface' Tablets
Surface will offer the all-important “killer app” at launch: namely, a touch version of Microsoft Office 15.

Microsoft Is the Most Exciting Company in Tech, Hands Down
The Surface, and now Windows Phone 8, merely feel like the culmination—or maybe the fulfillment—of what Microsoft has been poking and prodding at for the past six years when it first introduced the Xbox 360.

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