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If you work in any type of business, chances are you’re already leveraging Office 365 for a variety of tasks including sending e-mails, gaining access to calendars and improving collaboration amongst separated divisions of a large company. In fact, this cloud-based solution is one of the most popular currently on the market due to a variety of reasons including its cost-effectiveness, ease of use and enhanced connectivity.

This week in the space, headlines were made when Microsoft (News - Alert) Malaysia officially debuted Microsoft Office 365 for education within this growing region. Comprised of Microsoft Office Professional Plus, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Lync Online, and Microsoft SharePoint Online, this vital platform can help both educators and students learn much less complexly and more efficiently while seamlessly integrating technology into lesson plans.

Currently available in various plans including Office 365 Professional, Office 365 Enterprise and Office 365 Enterprise Plus, Office 365 can measure up to all customers expectations and beyond.

In a statement, Khatijah Samah, education segment director of Microsoft Malaysia, said that the cloud and online learning were key trends transforming education.

He added, "As schools face increasing needs to maximize resources and the pressure to innovate, we are offering enterprise-quality technology for free that will modernize teaching practices and help prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow."

In other news, in a recent article featured on the PC Pro website, Simon Jones openly ponders whether Microsoft’s new bouncing baby that drives collaboration and productivity within an office setting is leaving devoted customers in the dust by pushing them towards using a trial of Office 365 and then subscribing to Office 2013 Professional or Home Premium.

Jones stated, “Microsoft obviously believes everyone nowadays has constant Wi-Fi coverage wherever they are, and that if they don’t have Wi-Fi then they’ll have a good 3G signal or 3G dongle for their computer.”

Yet this simply isn’t the case, as many public locations still don’t offer access to a Wi-Fi network, which makes it virtually impossible to utilize this solution hosted in the cloud.

Closing out the week, ITWorx, a professional services organization and an expert in e-learning solutions, completed a successful large scale deployment of Microsoft Office 365 in the region serving more than 100, 000 users across 100 schools in collaboration with a major public sector education institution in the Gulf.

Office 365 for Education has been developed specifically with institutes of higher learning in mind to offer a one-stop-shop in which users can turn to when needing to utilize a calendar, instant messaging, group video, voice chat, in addition to online document viewing and editing.

 To find out more about the most up-to-date news about Office 365, be sure to stay tuned to the Office 365 Community exclusively on TMCnet!