Flinders University has teamed with Microsoft to provide its 16,000 undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students with a suite of online services, including free email.

The rollout of the Live@edu products will start in the middle of next year.

Flinders University Manager, Infrastructure Services, Mr Dean Gawler said that, in the face of ever-increasing demands on the storage space and computing resources required to support 24×7 availability of email, calendaring, messaging and other unified communications technologies, Flinders had sought other options.

“Outsourcing these services for students reduces the resources the University needs to provide while delivering significantly enhanced services to students at no cost to them – in short, a win-win situation,” Mr Gawler said.

Microsoft Australia Education Director, Mr Neil Jackson, said that in addition to providing students with an email solution, other Live@edu features include Windows Live Messenger and file sharing, Windows Live Spaces for personal web publishing, blogging and photo sharing and FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that allows users to synchronise files between multiple devices and share files with other student users.

“Live@edu makes it possible to create communities that last a lifetime, with email addresses students can keep after they graduate, and a rich set of communication services universities can use to help maintain an ongoing relationship with graduates,” Mr Jackson said.