Office 365 presents a bold new frontier for Redmond and its cloud ambitions. And the technology titan has had a fair amount with this cloud powered productivity suite in a short amount of time.
Redmond has secured several small and large, government, corporate and educational contracts lately whereby it has brought Office 365 to these organizations.
But now the company plans to bring the cloud based productivity suite to even more groups, and this time the costs are on the house — Microsoft has just announced a new program that will allow nonprofit groups and nongovernmental organizations to use Office 365 for free.
The company made the announcement in a press release, saying that the program will be initiated in 41 countries worldwide now, with plans to expand to 90 countries by July 2014.
The president of Microsoft International, Jean-Philippe Courtois, said that both large and small nonprofit groups will be able to benefit from this impressive new effort:
“Nonprofits operate in the same way as any other organization or business; however, many lack the resources to implement the latest technology. The donation of Office 365 allows them to be more effective and efficient in the work they do.”
Microsoft has a rather illustrious history of charity and donating software to nonprofits, and this is indeed another step in this direction.
Additionally, it also provides the company an opportunity to further expand the reach of Office 365. Bringing such a large number of users to the platform will only benefit the company when it pitches the cloud powered solution to businesses and governments.
All Comments
This is a good idea. The only thing I could take that would make it better if is Microsoft could find a way to give a 30-40% discount on licensing fees to companies that sell Microsoft products to non-profits or offer to subsidize a discount to them at an equivalent amount.