BPOS Rocks

SharePoint Online will be part of Live @ EDU

From the blog of Kevin Dean on Technet:

Great news from Educause this week! Microsoft announced that new SharePoint Online-based collaboration and productivity services will be available for students as part of the Live@edu next year. These new SharePoint-based services will offer IT departments more flexibility and control to set up and manage their school's collaboration and productivity tools in a security-enhanced environment…as well as the ability to access and manage permissions to sites, documents and content (pictures, videos) with enterprise-class control.

Separately, Blackboard plans to announce an alliance with Microsoft that will offer students and learners a streamlined access to information from their courses while navigating the Web. Under the agreement, Blackboard and Microsoft will work together to enable notifications from students' online courses to appear in their Web browser using the Bing toolbar when new course information becomes available through the Blackboard Learn™ platform. Press release can be found here.

Finally, more universities are choosing Microsoft's cloud computing offerings, to save schools time and money.  In the past four months nearly 5,000 schools have enrolled with Live@edu joining the thousands of other institutions in more than 100 countries already providing Live@edu to tens of millions of students worldwide.

See the blog from Anthony Salcito, Microsoft VP for Education Worldwide.

Difference between Office Live Mail and Exchange Online

Somebody asked a question on the technet forum what the difference is between the (free) Office Live Mail functionality and Exchange Online. Below you'll find my reply:

Office Live Mail is based on the Windows Live Mail or Hotmail platform. It allows you to create a maximum of 100 accounts. Synchronization with Outlook is possible through the Microsoft Office Outook Connector. Two way synchronization within between Office Live Mail and Outlook is possible for email messages, calendar items (available when you purchase the Premium Email service), contacts and tasks. Office Live Mail does not support synchronization or pushmail of Mobile clients.

Within Office Live Mail adds will be shown on the web interface. This webinterface is based on the Hotmail/Windows Live Mail webinterface and provides much less functionality that the Outlook Web Access environment.

By default users will get an mailaddress within Office Live Mail with the address username@officeliveusers.com. You can change this mailaddress by adding a domain.

An upgrade to Premium Email (ad free and the possibility to sync calendar items) costs approx 20 dollars per year.

I am not entirely sure how much space you get with Office Live Mail but I think it will be 5GB per user. This is the same for Exchange Online (BPOS).

Office Live Mail does not allow you to share a calendar, contacts or tasks. You cannot add conference rooms to Office Live Mail.

Mai Encryption is not supported with Office Live Mail.

The extensibility is not that extensive with office Live Mail compared to Exchange Online. There is no MAPI support, no Exchange WebDav support, Outook Live Mail cannot function as a SMTP relay and it doesn't support Exchange Web Services. Exchange Online does.

Outlook Live Mail does not support ActiveSync, Windows Mobile Device integration with Outlook and BlackBerry support. However a Mobile client is available for Windows Mobile.

In short: Outlook Live Mail is great to start; if you need added functionality or really want to work in a team you'll need Exchange Online (BPOS).

Below you'll find a screenshot for the mailclient in Office Live Mail:

Live@edu Organization

Microsoft announced some changes to their Live@EDU program. The Live@EDU program is a free services for schools enabling them to have a professional Mail Services hosted by Microsoft for free. These changes especially help schools migrating to Live@EDU with the configuration of their environment. An important change is the possibility to now skip the sign on message and procedure which school employees/students get when subscribing to the services, streamlining the onboarding process.

Live@EDU is a free program for schools. If you are a commercial user you should try Exchange Online.

Below the Microsoft announcement:

Microsoft Live@edu is pleased to introduce a new service for customers who use the Outlook Live e-mail platform: Live@edu Organization. This service introduces new features and administrative capabilities for Outlook Live that provides significant administrative flexibility, and is now the default feature set for all new Live@edu customers who select Outlook Live. 

Highlights of Live@edu Organization include:

• Multi-mailbox search  This feature provides a method to search for e-mail messages and other electronic communication sent and received by people in your organization, and to manage the results of the search.
• Streamlined on-boarding experience for users  This new service lets users start to use Outlook Live immediately, without having to accept terms of use or receive parental consent.
• Transport Rules (coming soon)  These are organization-wide rules that an administrator can use to control the flow of e-mail messages inside, and into and out of their organization.   

The features that are included with Live@edu Organization change the underlying data ownership model and contract relationship with Microsoft. Therefore, all existing customers must sign a new Terms of Use agreement (TOU) before we can enable Live@edu Organization for your school. Please be aware that this change to the TOU affects Outlook Live only and does not affect other Windows Live services which remain subject to Microsoft's standard consumer terms and conditions which are accepted by each End User.

Action Required

Please familiarize yourself with the new features enabled by Live@edu Organization and the associated changes to the privacy model via the links below.  If you still have questions after reviewing those links, then please visit the Live@edu Organization forum on Outlook Live Answers.

• Read about Live@edu Organization for Outlook Live
• View a podcast on changes to the privacy model

To move your school to Live@edu Organization, please follow the steps below before September 14, 2009.  If you do not sign the new TOU prior to this date, then you must wait for the TOU acceptance window to reopen in Spring 2010.

• Visit the Live@edu Organization Terms of Use Web site here and authenticate using the Outlook Live administrator ID associated with your domain.
• Review the TOU. Select "I accept" if you want to enable the Live@edu Organization feature set for your school.
• Allow seven to ten business days for Microsoft to migrate Outlook Live for your school to Live@edu Organization after you accept the TOU.
• Make your selection prior to September 14, 2009. If you do not take action before this date, then you must wait for the TOU acceptance window to reopen in Spring 2010.
• If your school has more than one tenant domain, please repeat the above steps for each domain by logging into the Live@edu Organization Terms of Use Web site here and authenticating with the Outlook Live administrator ID associated with each additional tenant domain.