Niall Sclater, the Open University's director of learning innovation, will shortly be taking a decision about whether to deploy Google Apps or Microsoft Live@edu.

He said that not only will the Open University be able to outsource email services for its 229,000 students, as well as its staff, taking away the maintenance burden from the university, but it will also be able to use the large document storage facilities offered by cloud computing systems.

"In the longer term I can see more and more functionality accruing to cloud-based services," said Sclater. "We are watching very closely and having conversations with Microsoft and Google as we make our decision about which of those systems to go for."