Microsoft Signs Massive Cloud Apps Deal

In what might be viewed as a victory for Microsoft and a loss for Google, the Kentucky Department of Education has signed up 700,000 students, faculty, and staff for free e-mail, instant messaging, and online storage running on the software giant's cloud services.

Microsoft officials, in a statement, called the agreement "the largest [C]loud deal in the United States." It may turn out to be the communications and collaboration model for education systems, and their IT staffs, in years to come.

The service—known as Live@edu—is free, which played a part in the Kentucky Department of Education's move. By switching e-mail services to Microsoft's Cloud computing environment, the state was able to ditch 180 on-premises servers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. The e-mail is now being hosted on Microsoft-hosted servers running Exchange Server 2010.

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