Microsoft's cloud for 70 lakh students

By Ruchi Shrimali

Microsoft will provide cloud services to 70 lakh students and 5 lakh faculty members across 10,000 technical colleges and institutes in India. This will be largest cloud deployments yet.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has agreed to use Microsoft Live@edu, which is a free suite hosting Microsoft's education services and applications. This will be separate from Microsoft Azure, a cloud business computing platform.

The Live@edu makes it possible for students and faculty to collaborate and communicate through instant messaging, e-mail and Microsoft Office Web Apps. It also has storage facility.

Later this year, Microsoft is planning to release Microsoft Office 365 and offer AICTE access to Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online e-mail and calendar, Microsoft Lync Online and Microsoft Office Professional.

IBM and Google were also in the race for the contract but Microsoft trumped them with its commitment to education across its programs and products. The latter also has experience as well as data centers across the world to support cloud service and deploy systems across geographically distributed locations.

The cloud computing project is expected to be completed by this summer. Read more

Cloud computing is believed to be the next big IT revolution that will add 4.4 crore new jobs worldwide in the next three years. Know more about the phenomenon