New Office 365 opportunity opens up in Aussie schools, businesses

Office 365 resellers have a new selling point up their sleeves, with Microsoft Open Technologies integrating the suite with widely-used learning tool Moodle.

Moodle is a free platform used by thousands of schools around the world, as well as many businesses. Estimates of Moodle users put the number at more than 65 million users, and the platform is used in 241 countries.

Australia is listed on the Moodle site as being among the top 10 countries, with 1,359 registrations. Moodle is used by a number of large organisations in Australia, including Monash University and Flinders University, and across business sites.

The integration was welcomed by the founder and managing director of Australian Moodle partner eCreators, Dean Saunders.

He estimates that 90 percent of schools, universities and TAFEs in Australia have at least one instance of Moodle on their campuses. The product also has traction in the business world. Saunders said that most of his Moodle customers are enterprises, rather than schools.

“The uptake’s massive. Traditionally speaking, Moodle was built for an education market. Now though we’re seeing more and more people in more corporate-type organisations take up the product.”

While Office integration is not new, those involved claim these are the first “comprehensive, standards-based plugins built in close cooperation with the Moodle partner ecosystem”.

It allows Office 365 usernames and passwords to work with Moodle, Moodle calendars to be synced with Office 365, and teachers to embed Office Mix lectures in Moodle courses, for example.

“Usually that integration could be $20 to $30,000. Now to have it as a standard plugin is a huge win for the consumer who has that capability out of the box,” Saunders said. “For our customers, to be able to plug directly into Office 365 is a huge step forward. A massive step forward.”

Another Moodle partner, Pukunui, has more than 300 sites using Moodle and about half a million users, estimated the firm's business manager Dom Seneque.

He said the user base in Australia had spread well beyond schools. “We’ve got hairdressers using it, boat builders, yoga classes using it. It’s a huge range," he said. Surf life savers, international shipping companies as well as registered training organisations, health and safety trainers, hospitals are also among users, Seneque told CRN.

Pukunui's overseas customer base also includes a university in China with over two million registered students, he said.