State University of New York Moves to Microsoft’s Cloud
The State University of New York (SUNY) has inked a deal to offer Microsoft [email protected] cloud solutions to all 64 of its campuses statewide. Under the deal, up to 465,000 students could make the leap to Microsoft’s cloud – but it’s important to note that while [email protected] is available to every SUNY school, each campus has to individually choose to make the move. All the same, it’s a big win for Microsoft ahead of the launch of Office 365.
The deal sounds similar to one the New York City Department of Education signed earlier in 2010 – and in that case, the actual migration was facilitated by cloud service provider ePals. While there’s no word on how the channel fits into this deal specifically. TalkinCloud suspects some SUNY schools will need solutions provider assistance as they seek to migrate from a mix of email and collaboration systems to [email protected]
As usual with these customer deals, Microsoft’s press release highlights the potential cost savings of going with a cloud solution, with [email protected] adoptee Monroe Community College (MCC) slated to save an estimated $600,000 over the next five years.
An interesting wrinkle to this project: Microsoft Office 365, slated for arrival sometime in 2011, is expected to be the successor to [email protected] We’ll be pushing for more details on how Office 365 will be designed for colleges, universities and K-12 school districts.
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