REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 19, 2013 — Today, Microsoft Corp. announced that its highly popular email service, Outlook.com, is ready for prime time. Since the release of Outlook.com last summer as a preview, millions of people have already actively started using it, making it the world’s fastest growing email service, going from 0 to 60 million in just six months.

A Vision for Modern Email

Email is a critical part of our everyday lives; email plays a crucial role in how we get things done. Outlook.com was designed as an email service focused on removing barriers and simply getting people going. Outlook.com gets people going in four key areas:

• Delivering a beautiful, fresh and intuitive experience on modern browsers and devices

• Keeping people connected with their friends and co-workers across the networks they really use

• Providing a smart and powerful inbox to handle today’s email needs including SkyDrive for sharing virtually anything in a single email

• Putting people in control by prioritizing their privacy

More Than 60 Million Help Make the Outlook.com Vision Come to Life

Through the preview, Microsoft has heard a great deal about customers’ favorite features, the way they use the product, and how well Outlook.com is delivering on the company’s vision for modern email. For example, Outlook.com lets customers connect to popular social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Today, millions of people are using those features to keep up to date with friends’ contact info updates, photos and tweets. Outlook.com is also designed to make it easy to send hundreds of photos and videos in a single message — all powered by SkyDrive. After only six months, nearly half of all people using Outlook.com have already used SkyDrive to share more than half a billion photos and Office documents.

A Great Upgrade for Hotmail Customers

Starting today, Microsoft will begin to upgrade every Hotmail user to Outlook.com. The upgrade is seamless and instant for Hotmail customers; everything including their @hotmail.com email address, password, contacts, etc., will stay the same. Now Hotmail customers will get all the benefits from the redesigned Outlook.com experience: a fresh and intuitive user interface, lots of new features, and better performance.

Get Started Today

Those who would like to get the new benefits of the Outlook.com experience can check it out today at Outlook.com.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 15, 2013 — The Texas Department of Information Resources is moving to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 as part of a statewide IT modernization strategy. Office 365, an always-up-to-date cloud productivity service, will streamline and improve the state’s communication and collaboration capabilities for more than 100,000 employees, making it the largest statewide deployment of email and collaboration services in the U.S. Office 365 has already been deployed across multiple state agencies, including the Health and Human Services System, Department of Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Information Resources, and Department of Insurance, with the Department of Criminal Justice and Alcoholic Beverage Commission coming on board soon. The move to Office 365 offers the state significant savings in IT spending because of greater efficiencies and increased capacity.

“No other solution provides the rich capabilities of Office 365, including webconferencing, real-time collaboration, and document and calendar sharing,” said Todd Kimbriel, director of E-Government for the Texas Department of Information Resources. “Office 365 will increase efficiency and help our agencies better serve the needs of citizens without compromising on security or privacy.”

Compliance was an important factor in the state’s selection of Office 365. Several agencies, including Texas’ Department of Criminal Justice, Alcoholic Beverage Commission, Department of Insurance, and Health and Human Services System, require access to data that is subject to complex security and privacy regulations.

Texas Department of Information Resources and Microsoft Corp. worked together to support the state’s requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS), in order to maintain the state’s compliance posture and high standards for security and privacy. Microsoft has made a contractual commitment to the Texas Department of Information Resources by signing the CJIS Addendum in addition to a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. As a result of this partnership, jurisdictions at all levels within the State of Texas, including cities and counties, will be able to take advantage of Office 365.

“Microsoft has been a long-standing strategic partner with a commitment to understanding and addressing the unique requirements law enforcement and health care practitioners must meet,” said Karen Robinson, Department of Information Resources executive director and State of Texas chief information officer. “The enterprise-class capabilities of Office 365 and Microsoft’s proven track record gave us the confidence we needed to move to the cloud.”

“We’ve worked hard to provide security and privacy solutions the State of Texas can trust,” said Michael Donlan, vice president for Microsoft’s State and Local Government business. “The familiarity of Office backed by deep investments in cloud security, privacy and compliance play an important role in how Microsoft is enabling city, state and federal agencies to move to the cloud.”

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.