But this doesn’t just affect education – the integration of on-premise and cloud-based services is a hot topic for all IT Directors across business and the public sector, from small local businesses to global enterprises, and for all levels of government agencies and departments.
How do all of the dots join up in this new IT services picture? Well, thinking about it has prompted me to write a summary of what’s going on with cloud-based services at Microsoft, to fill in some of the picture from an education viewpoint. Here’s the first summary in a series of posts about Microsoft's cloud-based services.
We’ve made a public big shift in our emphasis towards cloud-based services; but behind the scenes there have been very big changes going on for years to get ready for the day that cloud takes off right across the world.
I’m going to use ‘Cloud’ to represent all of the Internet services that users and institutions might be using. It might be a mix of desktop and web-based software, or an entirely web-based service. Either way, it’s something that involves a web-service as part of the IT delivery.
So here’s my summary of the cloud-based services that Microsoft do that may be directly relevant to education, and the essential differences.
The first two services, Live@edu and Office 365 for education are education-specific, and not available outside of education. The other services are designed for a wide range of business and public sector customers, so you’ll see some overlap between the different services. Although that can feel like duplication, it also means that you’re able to select your online services rather like an a la carte menu – choosing the combination of options to match your exact needs.
Live@edu is a free hosted service, designed specifically for education, which allows you to outsource some of your IT infrastructure to the cloud. The starting point for many is email, where you keep your existing email domain (institution.ac.uk) and point it over to our email servers – and we then run an Exchange 2010 mail service from our data centres for you, with each student getting a 10GB email inbox. As part of the service, each student gets their own Windows Live ID, which also means that they can use the hosted SkyDrive service too – with 7GB of personal file storage hosted on the web for each student.
As it’s free, you can simply sign up directly at the Live@edu site
Visit the worldwide Live@edu website
Office 365 for education, which will be available from the (northern hemisphere) summer is a hosted service, designed specifically for education, which allows you to outsource a large set of your IT infrastructure to the cloud. The starting point for many, like Live@edu, is email and calendars, but the key additional functionality in Office 365 is the whole productivity suite offered by Office 365 online – SharePoint, Lync, Office Web Apps etc. So you could use Office 365 for education for something as complex (and money saving) as replacing your existing telephone system!
How do you buy it?
You have to wait until it’s available shortly, and until then I’d suggest you have a chat with your Microsoft account manager.
Where to find out more
Read more about pricing, and then jump over to worldwide Office 365 for education website