Very good win for Microsoft in a very competitive side of the market. Remarkable is that “the package Google offered to universities did not include anything not already available to the public“.
… The School of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School chose Microsoft over the other finalist, Google, to replace the crash-prone Webmail system, with a new service to be called “Penn Live,” SAS officials will announce today.
The choice comes after a long negotiation process that lasted well past the final Jan. 31 deadline that SAS officials had set for the decision.
Microsoft’s service, which will include e-mail, messaging, web-hosting, a calendar and a document-sharing platform, will be available to students sometime this summer.
SAS Vice Dean of Administration and Finance Ramin Sedehi said that while both companies negotiated in good faith, officials chose Microsoft in the end because the package Google offered to universities did not include anything not already available to the public.
“With Microsoft, the institutional product was clearly superior,” Sedehi said. …
… While the main draws of Microsoft’s e-mail will be an east-to-use interface, stability and 2 gigabytes of storage, the product will also include many other Microsoft applications.
Penn students will be able to access MSN Messenger for instant messaging; Windows Live Spaces for web publishing, blogging, and photo sharing; and FolderShare, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. ….
Source: Dailypennsylvanian.com
