A project was conducted in 2010/11 to evaluate Microsoft Live@Edu / Office 365 service for University staff. Whilst the recommendation to move to this service for staff was not endorsed at that time by ITC, although the exercise was useful in understanding the market more intimately the student community via EUSA subsequently expressed a strong interest in moving to a cloud hosted Office 365 service in preference to their current use of OCS eDiary and SMS Mail, with OCS eDiary being hardly used by students and SMS mail perceived as out-dated.
In response to the student interest, IS Applications Division have enabled (with Microsoft’s support), a sandpit environment to allow a delegation of EUSA nominated students to gain a better awareness of Office 365, and to enable them to confirm whether they would like IS to offer such a service to the student community.
The package contains a number of functional modules:
- Web-based email
- Lync - Instant messaging, voice and video conferencing
- Office Web Apps (online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote)
- One Note, is an online application for your notes, ideas, and research that can be private or shared
- SharePoint intranet for sharing files and co-authoring docs
- Antivirus and anti-spam filtering
- Online customer support
The delivery milestone for the project is scheduled for January 2013.
This project is governed by a project board under the convener Dave Berry and the project board papers can be viewed here
All project documentation prior to 6th August can be found at http://old.projects.ed.ac.uk/areas/itservices/com/COM001/index_table.shtml
Current project status
| Report Date | RAG | Budget | Effort Completed | Effort to complete |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2014 | 334.0 days | 355.0 days | 0.2 |