With Microsoft’s announcement yesterday that its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Live@edu would eventually converge into the new Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for education offerings it also expanded on some of the benefits that will be available for education customers when it becomes available sometime next year.

Ray Fleming (@RayFleming), Microsoft’s education marketing manager, blogged last night about some of the changes over on the UK Schools Blog, but I’ve summarised some of the key benefits for education below.

Benefits:

• Large 25GB mailboxes and the ability to send attachments up to 25 MB
• Anywhere access to e-mail, important documents, contacts and calendar on nearly any device, including PC, Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry
• Works with the programs students know and use most — Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
• Student access to Office Web Apps for viewing, sharing and light editing of documents
• Team sites to share, manage and search for information and resources
• Industry-leading, always-up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spam solutions
• Optional student access to 25 GB of free online storage on Windows Live SkyDrive
• Latest version of Microsoft Live@edu, which has thousands of schools and millions of student users today

I’m really excited to see the suite in action – Live@edu is already used by tens of millions of users in more than 100 countries. In my opinion Office 365 for education represents are real step forward in offering cloud-based solutions for schools, colleges and universities in the UK.