If you believe statements that charities have no money, are terrified of insecurity and are only interested in ICT that cuts costs, are universally true across the Third Sector, you’d have come away with some preconceptions challenged by a debate at this week’s Business Cloud Summit 2010 conference in London.
That’s because a group of six ICT leaders at a range of charities from RNLI to The Salvation Army outlined how the UK’s £40bn non-profit sector has a set of much more flexible attitudes and expectations of Cloud than many outsiders would expect.
Thus, of the charities speaking at the show, Cloud means everything from a core satellite tracking system to protect fishing vehicles in the stormy North Sea to connecting a globally distributed workforce – to stopping having to cope when recalcitrant donkeys tip over servers down ravines in remote corners of the world, it seems.
But in the words of Richard Atterton, COO of Compassion UK, what links all these service organisations and technology is “meeting the expectation of our supporters that a very, very high level of money they donate goes to the cause they want to help – and I think Cloud allows that”.
“Cloud means doing a lot more with the same amount of money, not less,” added David Sims, Technical Services Manager at VSO (who is also the man who doesn’t want to worry about donkeys any more, in case you were wondering).
The Third Sector seems to be taking a firmly pragmatic view of Cloud in any case. “It’s simple,” declared Peter Bradley, Operations Manager at lifeboat charity RNLI. “If it doesn’t suit you, don’t do it. If anything, for instance, I’d say some data would be safer in the Cloud than where it is now, but that’s for your organisation to decide.”
“Bad Cloud software is just as little use to you as bad traditional desktop,” added Eliot Martin, Technical Director at AbilityNet.
“No IT director can lose sight of the fact, no matter what sector they work in, that cost effective can never be at the expense of good and efficient service delivery, too,” concluded Martyn Croft, CIO of the Salvation Army.
