With 7 million users, Microsoft's educational cloud has its biggest deployment in India

14th April 2012
With 7 million users,  Microsoft's educational cloud has its biggest deployment in India

Mumbai, April 14, 2012 — Over 7 million potential users, make the Indian educational deployment of Microsoft's Live@Edu cloud platform, the largest anywhere in the world. On Friday, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Microsoft Corporation jointly announced that the nodal government body for technical and engineering education in India AICTE would deploy Live@edu over the next three months to reach to more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India. One of the first iterations would bring email, Microsoft Office Web Apps, instant messaging and storage to AICTE’s more than 7 million students and nearly 500,000 faculty members.
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.
Says Dr. S. S. Mantha, Chairman of AICTE: “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".
Adds Kapil Sibal, Indian Minister for Human Resources Development ( and education):“The PPP model (public-private partnership) is most essential in running and managing training institutions to address the skill gap most efficiently. Microsoft’s commitment to empower students by deploying Microsoft Live@edu for 7.5 million users across the country with AICTE is commendable and a step towards 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”, says Sanket Akerkar, Managing Director, Microsoft Corporation India. “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”, he added.
Live@edu is a no-cost hosted platform with more than 22 million users worldwide, 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. www.microsoft.com/liveatedu