News

• About 4.5 million Catholic school students to get Office 365

  About 4.5 million Catholic school students will get access to Microsoft's Office 365 cloud e-mail and collaboration suite as part of a 3-year deal the software vendor struck with the Catholic International Education Office (OIEC).

• Open-source messaging at (nearly) the speed of light

  Felix Ehm, a member of CERN's beams control group, has always had a curious and scientific bent.

• About 600,000 L.A. Community College students to get Microsoft Live@EDU

  The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) will provide email and collaboration applications to about 600,000 students via Microsoft's Live@EDU cloud suite, a project for which it also considered Google Apps for Education.

• At Interior Department, Google Apps will co-exist with Outlook, Office -- for now

  Although the U.S. Interior Department plans to replace its on-premise email servers with Google Apps' cloud-based Gmail, the agency will retain Microsoft Outlook and Office as its standard e-mail client and desktop office productivity software for end users.

• After legal tussle, Google beats Microsoft for large US contract

  The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google's services over Microsoft's Office 365.

• Microsoft's Office Live Small Business closing today

  Microsoft is sticking to its plan to shut down its Office Live Small Business (OLSB) suite of cloud-based services on Monday, even though it seems many customers are either unaware of the deadline or are having difficulties migrating.

• Google fixes Gmail outage that affected millions of users

  An outage that prevented millions of users from accessing Gmail on Tuesday has been resolved, according to Google.

• Limited first beta of Notes Social Edition now available

  IBM has distributed to partners the first external beta code of Notes/Domino Social Edition, which will allow Notes client applications to run in a browser, the company said in a blog post on Thursday.

• Microsoft gets large India order for its Cloud suite for education

  Microsoft said it has gained in India its largest cloud customer ever, where the company is providing Live@edu, its free cloud services for student communication and collaboration, to 7.5 million users.

• Many Office Live Small Business users fret over Office 365 transition

  Many companies that rely on Office Live Small Business (OLSB) for their e-mail and website hosting are complaining that a required transition to Office 365 or to a third-party hosting provider is too complicated for them to carry out and that Microsoft could be doing more to help them out as OLSB's closure date fast approaches.

• Google displays explanations for marking spam in Gmail

  Google has begun labeling the reason for marking messages as spam in Gmail, so that users have a better idea why some email is being flagged as such.

• Microsoft says SharePoint isn't late to enterprise social networking

  Although enterprise social networking (ESN) products that replicate Facebook-like and Twitter-like functionality for workplaces have been around for about five years, Microsoft sees a big opportunity in that market, to which some feel the maker of Windows and Office has been slow to respond.

• Analysts: Microsoft didn't cut Office 365 prices just to be nice

  In announcing price reductions for Office 365 this week, Microsoft said its cost of running the cloud suite has fallen and that it wants to "pass on" those savings to customers, but some analysts believe the primary drivers for the move have little to do with goodwill.

• Microsoft cuts the prices of some Office 365 plans

  Microsoft has lowered the prices of some editions of the Office 365 cloud collaboration and communication suite, which was launched about eight months ago and competes directly with Google Apps and other similar products.

• Despite predictions to the contrary, Exchange holds off Gmail in D.C.

  When Washington, D.C., led by its then CTO, the charismatic Vivek Kundra, bought Google Apps seats for its almost 40,000 municipal employees in 2008, many predicted that the city would soon after ditch its more expensive, on-premise Microsoft software for e-mail and productivity applications.