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As the summer days transition into fall-like weather, Office 365 is continuing to be adopted by multiple industries due to the fact it allows an entire workforce to collaborate much more efficiently as well as reduces costs significantly for an enterprise overall.

This week in the space, Office 365 for Education was implemented by Des Moines, Iowa school districts in grades sixth through 12th, giving these adolescents access to a robust offering that will enable them to receive seven gigabytes of document storage on their school district’s server, while teachers can select to allow these youngsters to utilize personal electronic devices in the classroom setting.

In a lot of cases, kids that fall within this age groups know the ins and outs of e-mail even better than their parents so Office 365 is a great way to allow these students to complete educational-related assignments while strengthening a skill set they will use in the real world one day. It also acts a solution that can be leveraged to find quick answers to questions.

Blake Hammond, a sixth-grade science teacher at Merrill Middle School, told the DesMoinesRegister, “With (these changes) we’re trying to harness the devices they already use for educational purposes, and we’re making the transfer of files, and that sort of thing, a lot easier.”

In other news, Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based e-mail archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange and Office 365, revealed that organizations within the legal community are continuing to leverage its cloud-based solution, growing by 30 percent within this vertical only in the last year.

At this time, approximately 183,000 legal employees worldwide now utilize the company’s e-mail management solution to raise the bar on security, eDiscovery and business continuity, in addition to ramping up productivity for e-mail users.

 Moreover, law firms that work with Mimecast within the U.S. now encompass 44 percent of its entire customer base and the organization has even inked relationships with big name firms such as McNair Law Firm, Tonkon Torp and Jones Waldo.

Closing out the week, reports highlighted that Office 365 Open License will make its official debut before July 2013.

Currently focusing on remaining at the forefront of stiff competition with Google (News - Alert) Apps, the technology giant’s upcoming release comes after the launch of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) back in 2009, which is still being used by government, education, and small businesses. For a price of $120 per user, per year, BPOS is comprised of a cloud-accessible version of Live Meeting, Office Communicator, Sharepoint, and Exchange.

Be sure to check back each and every week to the Office 365 community for all of the latest news in the space!

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