LACCD, the largest community college district in the U.S., plans to start the Live@EDU rollout in the fall, focusing initially on its current students, said LACCD CIO Jorge Mata.

"This will become our official communication link with our students," he said.

LACCD plans to later include staff and professors, most of whom have email addresses on its various on-premise Exchange systems, as well as make Live@EDU available to about 2.5 million alumni.

"We're prioritizing the active students and faculty first," he said.

Until now, it has been up to the LACCD's nine colleges to independently decide whether they offer email to students via on-premise Microsoft Exchange email systems. But the LACCD decided it wanted to offer all of its students an email account, along with other collaboration applications, via a cloud-based suite, and thus piloted Live@EDU and Google Apps.