REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 23, 2011 — Today at the Microsoft U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit, Microsoft Corp. announced cloud computing agreements with 16 new government and education customers. In his keynote address, Curt Kolcun, vice president of U.S. Public Sector at Microsoft, welcomed several of the newest users of Microsoft Online Services, including Portland Public Schools, Oregon; University at Albany — SUNY; Fashion Institute of Technology — SUNY; Vanderbilt University; City of Alexandria, Va.; City of Virginia Beach, Va.; and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians tribal government in southern Alabama.

These public sector organizations join a rapidly expanding community of government agencies and schools that have recently implemented Microsoft cloud computing solutions, including the state of California, the state of Minnesota, U.S. Department of Agriculture, California State University campuses at Long Beach, Pomona and San Francisco, the State University of New York (SUNY), New York City Public Schools in partnership with ePals Inc., Kentucky Department of Education, and the University of Georgia. In addition to cost savings and efficiency gains, public sector organizations are choosing Microsoft cloud solutions for their security features, interoperability with existing technology investments and the 24/7 voice support services. Microsoft’s newest government customers join more than 190 state and local government organizations in nearly every U.S. state, bringing the total to more than 3 million government employees utilizing some form of Microsoft Online Services. In addition, Microsoft Live@edu is currently one of the most popular communication and collaboration cloud suites for education, serving more than 15 million people in more than 10,000 education institutions worldwide.

“Public sector organizations are looking for enterprise-grade cloud solutions, and that means providing high levels of security, functionality and support,” Kolcun said. “We’re seeing government and education organizations of every size and dimension using Microsoft cloud solutions to help reduce costs and increase productivity in support of their missions.”

Portland Public Schools Leads the Path in Oregon to the Cloud

Portland Public Schools, the largest school district in the state of Oregon with more than 46,000 students across 85 schools, is planning to move to Microsoft Live@edu as its core collaboration and communications suite for students, teachers and staff to drive improved teaching and learning in the classroom. Portland was looking for a new e-mail solution as its current on-premises Novell GroupWise system was coming to end of life, and it wanted to provide new services to students. After a thorough analysis of both Live@edu and Google Apps for Education, Portland chose Live@edu because of Microsoft’s training and support structure, security, and interoperability advantages.