NEW DELHI and REDMOND, Wash., April
12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. and All India
Council for Technical Education (AICTE) announced today that AICTE
is deploying Microsoft Live@edu over the next three months to more
than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout
India. The cloud deployment will
expand students' access to high-quality technical education and
collaboration.
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Live@edu is a hosted communication and collaboration service
that offers email, Microsoft Office Web Apps, instant messaging and
storage to AICTE's more than 7 million students and nearly 500,000
faculty members, for a total reach of 7.5 million users —
roughly double the size of the Los
Angeles population — making AICTE Microsoft's largest cloud
customer ever. Live@edu is the first step in AICTE's deployment of
Microsoft cloud computing for education. AICTE also plans to deploy
Microsoft Office 365 for education when it becomes available later
this year, providing access to Microsoft Exchange Online email and
calendar, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online and
Microsoft Office Professional as the technical infrastructure to
support member colleges and institutes.
"Microsoft's cloud platform will make for a truly progressive
ecosystem and contribute to the country's technical education by
providing a better communication and collaboration platform for
institutes and students," said Dr. S. S.
Mantha, chairman of AICTE.
Part of India's Ministry of
Human Resource Development, AICTE is the governing body for
technical education in India,
certifying and managing technical colleges and institutes in a
country where the technology industry and higher education are both
becoming increasingly vital to the economy. To carry out its charge
of evaluating the curriculum and quality of education for all
technical institutes across the country, AICTE needed to have
consistent and timely communication with these colleges, some of
which are located in the remotest districts of India. AICTE and the ministry wanted to deploy
a technology system that would provide an efficient platform for
students and the institutional framework and would foster
efficiency and support broader educational reforms.
AICTE reviewed solutions from a range of vendors, including
Microsoft, IBM and Google. One of the major factors in the decision
to choose Microsoft's cloud services for education was Microsoft's
comprehensive commitment to education across all the company's
products and programmes, as well as the system's seamless
interoperation with the entire Microsoft product portfolio. The
council was also impressed by Microsoft's extensive experience in
higher education and ability to deploy a system across
geographically distributed locations without adding significantly
to the institutions' IT management costs or complexity.
"India is seeing rapid economic
activity and growth. Developing India's youth and their skills is going to
play an important role globally in the country's inclusive growth,"
said Anthony Salcito, vice president
of Worldwide Education. "The union budget also laid emphasis on
skill development and so does the proposed 12th Five Year Plan with
a National Policy on Skill development. The PPP model
(public-private partnership) is most essential in running and
managing training institutions that provide every opportunity to
address the skill gap most efficiently. Microsoft's commitment to
empower students by deploying Microsoft Live@edu to 7.5 million
students, teachers and university employees across the country with
AICTE is commendable and a step toward an informed and developing
India. I congratulate both AICTE
and Microsoft on this significant milestone."
"We are delighted with the confidence posed by AICTE in
Microsoft," said Sanket Akerkar,
managing director, Microsoft Corp. India Private Ltd. "Microsoft
has always seen education as a priority area and believes that
technology offers possibilities that can help empower not just
teachers and students but collectively India as a nation."
The implementation is already underway and is being managed by
Microsoft and a set of Live@edu partners. Full deployment is
expected to be complete by summer 2012.
Live@edu is the leading cloud suite for education, with more
than 22 million people using the service worldwide. At 7.5 million
users, the AICTE deployment is the largest cloud deployment ever.
Other recent Live@edu adoptions include a 700,000 cloud-based
collaboration solution for the Kentucky Department of Education.
The online service helps educational institutions provide email and
enterprise-grade online tools to students and faculty while helping
to reduce costs and simplify IT management.
About Microsoft Live@edu
Live@edu is a no-cost hosted platform for student communication
and collaboration, providing industry-leading services to the
global education market. Email and calendars with a 10GB inbox,
25GB of additional file storage, document sharing, instant
messaging, video chat and mobile email are just part of the feature
set. Live@edu provides students with the professional tools to
prepare them for college or work from day one. Live@edu is
accessible through popular Web browsers for Windows, Mac and Linux
operating systems — and easy to set up, administer and manage. More
than 10,000 schools in more than 130 countries have enrolled in
Live@edu, serving 22 million people worldwide. More information is
available at http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide
leader in software, services and solutions that help people and
businesses realise their full potential.
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.