Microsoft Online Services History

Microsoft online services and hosted services have evolved over the years and been rebranded a few times. This page aims to provide a simple summary of the various service offerings and their evolution as it pertains to the University.

The industry-specific era

• ~2005 - live@edu released to provide hosted email (Outlook Live) and file storage (SkyDrive) for students at academic institutions

  • Effectively created a "pocket" of existing Windows Live services for each academic institution

  • Each live@edu account was really a Windows Live account using a .edu address

• ~2007 - Microsoft Office Groove released to provide collaboration and file synchronization

• ~2008 - Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) released to provide hosted "back office" services (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, etc.) for customers.

• ~2008 - Windows Azure released to provide hosted websites for customers.

• ~2009 - SharePoint Workspace released as rebrand of Office Groove client with support for file synchronization between clients and SharePoint Server or SharePoint Online

The brand consolidation era

• ~2010 - Office 365 released as successor to BPOS with additonal features:

  • Online document handling with Office Web Apps

  • File synchronization with SharePoint Workspace

  • Directory synchronization with Active Directory via DirSync

  • Federated authentication with ADFS

• ~2010 - Office 365 for Education released as successor to live@edu with additional features and caveats:

  • Effectively identical to Office 365 but with academic pricing and licensing

  • Customers must migrate from live@edu accounts into Office 365 for Education

  • Existing live@edu mailboxes could be imported into Exchange Online in Office 365

  • Existing live@edu SkyDrive accounts could only be converted to Windows Live (aka personal) SkyDrive accounts

• ~2013 - The utexas tenant is created in Office 365 to enable migration off of on-premises Exchange

• ~2013 - SkyDrive Pro released as rebrand of SharePoint Workspace to align file synchronization products under the SkyDrive brand.

  • SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro continue to work with their respective backend services and not cross over

The Azure era

• ~ 2013 - Windows Azure Active Directory released to provide identity services to Windows Azure.

  • The existing directory service used by Office 365 could now authenticate Azure applications and services.

• ~ 2013 - The University begins migration from on-premises Exchange Server to Exchange Online and Office 365

  • Austin Active Directory synchronizes user information via the DirSync utility.

• ~ 2014 - Windows Azure rebranded to Microsoft Azure

• ~ 2014 - OneDrive and OneDrive for Business released as rebrand of SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro, respectively

<TO BE COMPLETED>

The Entra era

• ~2023 - Azure Active Directory rebranded to Microsoft Entra ID