More information on Office 365 for Education

More information has come out from Microsoft this week around Office 365 for Education.  As mentioned in a previous post we only had limited information but during the past week Microsoft had a presentation day for Higher Education establishments which included a presentation on live@edu and Office 365 for Education.

The slides from the presentation can be downloaded here.

What made me laugh..

If this is live@edu…

this is what Office 365 for Education will be…

Differences between live@edu and Office 365 for Education

In previous posts we discussed what’s coming in new and the differences to the current live@edu.  Here is a better view from the presentation.

Meeting Student and Educator Needs

• Works seamlessly with Microsoft Office programs  that users already count on and teaches students new software skills that will help them prepare for the future
• Provide sites for students and educators to work together in real time on assignments, group projects, and research – both inside and outside your institution
• Communicate seamlessly from email to instant messaging to online classrooms, including audio, video and screen sharing
• Helps students and educators become more productive with a 25GB mailbox that unifies email and voicemail (Unified Messaging)
• Makes scheduling easier by showing who and what resources are available, such as projectors or meeting rooms
• Allow users to see whether other students or educators are online

Learning from Anywhere

• Provide users anywhere-access to their email, assignments and calendar on nearly any device*
• Works with devices that students and educators use most — including PC, Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry
• Rich experience with Outlook Web App on a broad set of browsers or offline access via Office desktop applications on PCs and Macs
• View and edit assignments with Office Web Apps across a broad range of browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome)
• Connect securely over Internet with HTTPS without the need for VPN.

Lower Costs

• Reduce the time and effort spent managing email and collaboration servers, such as patch upgrades and security updates, while still keeping you in control
• 24/7, IT professional phone support or via electronic ticketing
• Hybrid deployment scenarios allow on-premises and online users to work together seamlessly
• Simplified management with a single administration centre with role based access
• Ease of interoperability with existing systems, such as SunGuard and Blackboard, through extensible platform.

Enterprise Security, Reliability and Privacy

• Same 99.9% uptime commitment, backed by a SLA, as Office 365 for enterprises
• Safeguard your data with enterprise-grade reliability, disaster recovery capabilities, geo-redundant, replicated, data centres and a strict privacy policy
• Helps protect your email environment with premium anti-spam and antivirus protection provided by multiple virus scanning engines
• Helps customers comply with ISO 27001, SAS 70 Type I, FERPA, HIPAA, FISMA, EU Safe Harbour Seal
• Configure services to meet your institution’s unique needs and give your users access to only the services they need