Office 365 rolls out in more Asian markets, free for education

• 50% growth in users every month in Asia Pacific
• Indian education organization now Microsoft’s biggest ever cloud customer

MICROSOFT Corp has rolled out its Office 365 cloud productivity service in four new Asian markets: Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Taiwan. The service was previously only available in available in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Office 365 brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service, Microsoft said in a statement.
 
The company also announced the general availability of Office 365 for education, allowing students and educators to take advantage of cloud-based communications and collaboration tools at no cost.
 
 “Today the number of users of Office 365 is growing by approximately 50% every month in the Asia Pacific region,” said Andrew Pickup, Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific chief marketing and operations officer, without providing actual numbers.
 
“We see the most significant growth from small and midsize businesses. Office 365 levels the playing field for these organizations which will get to enjoy enterprise-grade productivity and collaboration technology for a price as low as US$6 per user per month.”
 
On the education front, the All India Council for Technical Education became Microsoft’s largest cloud customer ever when it recently announced it would deploy Office 365 for education to 7.5 million users at more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India.