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.