14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft to roll out a refresh for its collection of services it is offering organizations in the education world next year.
The Redmond company did not detail its plans for the upcoming Live@edu service refresh, but it did indicate that customers will be able to take advantage of enhancements very early in 2011.
As early as February 2011 in fact, the first month when the updates will start to propagate to existing customers.
In fact, James Marshall, the new UK Live@edu Deployment Specialist promised that 2011 will be nothing short of a milestone year for Live@edu.
“In the first half of 2011, beginning in February, we’ll be rolling out the latest service refresh to Live@edu customers.
“This refresh will introduce new functionality, including Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, as well as performance improvements all round,” he explained.
2011 will indeed bring a very important change for Live@edu, and one that was announced even before the first details of the upcoming service refresh were made public.
In 2011, Live@edu will transition under Microsoft’s new Cloud productivity brand, Office 365.
The software giant still has to offer all the information around what this transition will imply for existing and future customers, but for the time being such info is scarce.
The Redmond company announced Office 365 just a few months ago, and underlined that it would bring a range of existing services under the new brand, including Microsoft Online Services.
“Back in October we announced the forthcoming Microsoft Office 365, and the version for education: Office 365 for education.
“This represents the massive investment we’re continuing to make in cloud services and Office 365 for education will be succeeding Live@edu in its current form when it becomes generally available,” Marshall stated.
Office 365 is currently in Beta and will be offered to customers in 2011. Later next year, Microsoft will also swap Live@edu for Office 365 for education.