MS renames, expands free online services for higher-ed

13.02.2009
Thursday expanded its Exchange Labs online messaging service that is offered free to university students and changed the name of the service to Outlook Live.

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.