{"id":9706,"date":"2012-04-13T02:04:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T00:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=9706"},"modified":"2012-04-13T15:48:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T13:48:16","slug":"microsoft-gets-biggest-ever-cloud-client","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/cloud-hosting\/9706\/microsoft-gets-biggest-ever-cloud-client\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft gets biggest-ever cloud client"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Microsoft\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1715-Microsoft\">Microsoft<\/a> announced its biggest-ever customer for cloud computing &#8211; software that it hosts on behalf of clients and delivers over the Internet &#8211; after winning a contract to provide free services to a major Indian education body.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft, which was built on the sale of expensive software that is installed on individual computers, has been forced by competition from <a title=\"Google\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1719-Google\">Google<\/a> and others to branch out into the fast-growing world of cloud computing.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. software giant said on Thursday it would provide its Live@edu communication and collaboration software to more than 7 million students and half a million teachers through a deal with the All India Council for Technical Education.<\/p>\n<p>The service, which Microsoft is providing for free as part of its education initiative, includes email, Office Web applications, instant messaging and storage.<\/p>\n<p>For users, cloud computing is inexpensive and simple, because it removes the need to spend time and money on installing software and managing servers.<\/p>\n<p>Large government departments are prime targets for vendors such as Microsoft and Google.<\/p>\n<p>Last June, Microsoft unveiled a revamped online version of its hugely profitable Office software suite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft announced its biggest-ever customer for cloud computing &#8211; software that it hosts on behalf of clients and delivers over the Internet &#8211; after winning a contract to provide free services to a major Indian education body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[25,1371,53,169],"class_list":["post-9706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-active","tag-cloud-computing","tag-google","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9706"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9710,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions\/9710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}