The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Microsoft Corporation on Thursday announced the implementation of Microsoft Live@edu for all the technical colleges in India.

The Managing Director of Microsoft Corp India, Mr Sanket Akerkar, said the cloud deployment across 10,000 engineering colleges — the largest ever — will enable about 7.5 million users to connect with one another.

Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resources Development, said, “Developing India's youth and their skills are going to play an important role in the country's inclusive growth. The PPP (public-private partnership) model is most essential in running and managing training institutions to address the skill gap most efficiently.”

The cloud is a virtual space on which users can share resources such as data and software.

The implementation of this initiative that is a part of Microsoft's corporate social responsibility is likely to be completed within the next three months.

Live@edu is a communication service that offers email, Microsoft Office Web Apps, instant messaging and 10GB storage space to students and faculty of these colleges.

“This will give students the opportunity to interact. For example, students can put up their research work on the portal,” said Dr S. S. Mantha, Chairman of AICTE.

Further, this would facilitate timely communication between AICTE and all the colleges within its ambit.

“Microsoft believes that technology offers possibilities that can help empower not just teachers and students but collectively India as a nation,” Mr Akerkar added.

> aesha.datta@thehindu.co.in

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