LA Community Colleges Choose MS Live@edu over Google Apps
In the latest Microsoft vs. Google Apps drama, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) has selected its Live@edu service over Google Apps for Education for its student, faculty and staff.
According to the release, LACCD chose Live@edu for “the technology’s security features and identity management capabilities, seamless integration with its on premise Exchange solution, and ease of use.”
LACCD is the largest community college district in the United States, serving more than 250,000 students at nine colleges throughout the Los Angeles metro area. MS Live@edu partnered with SADA Systems on the deal, which creates accounts for roughly 2.5 million student records and removes the need for manual student e-mail registration — upon matriculation, students will automatically receive an e-mail and collaboration account.
“Live@edu aligns with LACCD’s strategic vision to modernize and improve our colleges to ensure Los Angeles residents are trained with the skills needed to fill jobs of the 21st century,” said Jorge Mata, CIO for LACCD, in a prepared statement. “We needed a solution that would be easy to administer across all our colleges. One of the reasons we chose Microsoft Live@edu over Google Apps for Education is because it provides us with simple and automated management along with the visibility and control we need to apply our policies across our student information systems.”
About Live@edu: This is a free hosted platform for student communication and collaboration, with features including e-mail with a 10GB inbox, calendar, 7GB of additional file storage, document sharing, instant messaging, video chat and mobile e-mail. According to Microsoft, more than 10,000 schools in more than 130 countries have enrolled in Live@edu, serving 22 million people.
This is just the latest in the Microsoft/Google Apps cloud saga: The last time, Talkin’ Cloud reported Google Apps landed a government job — in this case with the U.S. Department of the Interior — after a lengthy court process involving contract irregularities with the folks in Redmond. Nevertheless, Microsoft had reason to smile when we reported that a growing number of VARs and MSPs seem to be warming up to Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft’s various business applications.
