At Educause 2009 in Denver, Colorado; Microsoft announced that the new SharePoint Online-based collaboration and productivity services will be added to Live@edu suite for free next year. So what does that mean? Well, lets look at some possibilities:

• Work with a class group on a research assignment – documents, background research, project plans can all be stored online and worked on from anywhere.
• Office Web Apps support means that a user can access Office files on almost any machine to simply view content, or to make essential modifications.
• Microsoft Office integration ensures they get a rich, integrated experience with SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps, if required… and of course offline access to files.