Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Microsoft repels Google with 40,000 e-mail account deal

Now Microsoft's Live@edu will be hosting messaging and storage platform by offering a substitute to the successful Google Apps education rush because Queensland University of Technology (QUT) will migrate some 40,000 student user accounts.

QUT joins "thousands of institutions around the world" by shifting to the Live@edu platform according to Microsoft. Microsoft Outlook Live, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive for storage are all included in the Live@edu suite of online applications.

When the existing email infrastructure "reached its limit of functionality and storage capacity QUT evaluate a host named Web-based e-mail solution which a big IT-expenditure for in-house. As per discussions with students, university administration and company representatives, and the deal included an opt-in trial involving students from the Faculty of Information Technology it was decided finally to go with Live@edu.

Actually Live@edu is attuned with "Windows, Mac and Linux machines" and with the IE, Firefox and Safari browsers. It’s being heard from QUT’s end that the university "carefully considered" various options and was happy to offer students a "greatly improved" e-mail service through Microsoft.

The students are provided with benefit of better capacity of mailbox and attachment file size, Also Live@edu service offers useful calendar, plus a number of improvements in related services, while retaining their identity as QUT students in their e-mail addresses. "The University will help by having automated service upgrades, and improved scalability and availability by setting up this software as a service offering from Microsoft."

Not only this QUT's 40,000 students will also have right to use a suite of online applications for the duration of this semester. Along with calendaring and contact management Live@edu service will horde student e-mail accounts with a 10Gb mailbox capacity, and allow 20Mb file attachments.

Not only this it will also provide include instant messaging and file sharing; Windows Live Spaces for personal Web publishing, blogging and photo sharing; and FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that allows users to synchronise files between multiple devices and share files with other student users features also.