Outlook Live is being expanded to include support for faculty and staff members.
The online messaging service is offered through a program called Live@edu and counts more than 3.5 million subscribers at various institutions including the University of Queensland and Ohio State University.
Microsoft also said the service will get a number of new features including support for Firefox and Safari in addition to Internet Explorer. Users also will have the ability to organize e-mail by "conversation," and will get integrated IM and presence via the combination of Windows Live Messenger and Office Communicator.
Microsoft runs Exchange Labs as a partnership between the Microsoft Exchange product team and Windows Live.
The suite of online collaboration and messaging services includes Outlook Live for e-mail needs, Office Live Workspace for documents sharing and collaboration, Windows Live Messenger for IM, and SkyDrive, which provides 25GB of online storage.
The service includes antispam and anti-malware protection and taps into the Windows Live ID authentication engine.
The Outlook Live service has been a mechanism for Microsoft to hone its online applications delivery skills as part of its software-plus-services .
In November, the company for corporate users, which is initially made up of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.
Microsoft had been working on developing those services as far back as 2005.
The software giant is not alone in the market. Google offers its own slate of free tools through its .
Microsoft's choice of the Outlook Live name is interesting as there that Microsoft will unveil a set of mobile services under the Outlook Live banner or name .