"It started as a project for students in the classroom, but it quickly evolved," he said, adding that the idea of having all students on a common email platform across all colleges soon gave rise to other potentially useful communications scenarios among other LACCD departments beyond the faculty, such as the financial aid and registrar teams.

In the end, Live@EDU won out over Google Apps for several reasons, including users' familiarity with the Microsoft products and their interfaces -- primarily Outlook -- as well as more back-end and front-end uniformity with the LACCD's on-premise Outlook/Exchange systems, Mata said.

Google declined to comment on the LACCD's decision to adopt Live@EDU, while Microsoft trumpeted the customer win in a . Both Live@EDU and Google Apps for Education are free.

However, the LACCD isn't banning Google Apps. Individual teams and departments will be able to use Google Apps if they choose to for email and collaboration, Mata said. However, Live@EDU will be the standard, systemwide platform.

While email communication will be the primary application, Mata thinks other capabilities of Live@EDU will also be incorporated by users, including calendaring, IM and audio/video conferencing; and document creation, editing, storage, sharing and collaboration through SkyDrive and online versions of Microsoft productivity applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.