Office 365 for Education: Leapfrogging the Competition

Those aren't my words, but the words of Chris Dawson over at ZDNet Education!  I couldn't agree more.  In fact, he goes on to say:

"Bottom line, Microsoft’s Office 365 for Education platform really is the
next generation of learning productivity tools. Check back for followups as more
details crystallize around its formal launch and I highlight cool use cases
teachers dream up for these tools. It’s going to be an interesting year!"

Well said Chris!

In case you missed the announcement of Office 365 for Education, Allen has a good recap and video of the announcements this morning.  I'm always personally amazed at what customers and partners build with our technology both in the commercial and education space.  One education customer, the Twynham School, who I have had the pleasure of meeting with and seeing their usage of SharePoint firsthand has an amazing site describing what they are doing with Microsoft technologies.  It's not a site to miss if you're looking for cutting edge ideas of what you can do in education with Microsoft.

Net, net no vendor has made this level of investment in the education
space. We're offering offering students access to our leading
products for free. Not some knock off, not some imitation that solves 10% of their problems or makes them 10% more productive. Plus with the addition of Office client (yes, full Office client) for $2 per month for students, it's a steal. Heck, that's less than a latte a month to get the full Microsoft Office client that you can connect to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync all through Office 365!

We're investing in education starting with our Live@Edu offering and this announcements shows we have a great roadmap coming with Office 365 for Education. I won't promise but I would bet institutions and students who go with Microsoft will graduate "Summa *** Laude" (and yes, the spam filter did replace the middle word with ***. . . too smart for its own good :)

For more information of Office 365 for Education, check out the official announcement.