Head in the clouds

On Friday I’m looking forward to spending some time at the Institute of Fundraising’s Technology Conference listening to a whole bunch of speakers from charities and within the sector talk about their current IT concerns and opportunities.

One of the thing we’re asked most about at the moment is that of “Cloud computing”.  What’s it all about? Why should I care?  In my session during the afternoon I’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned working in the sector and show how cloud computing is something that charities need to sit up and listen out for.

In the desktop era, our organisations owned and managed our own hardware and software in our own premises, in the server era, we outsourced some of that – the hardware and network side mainly, to data centres and managed hosting firms, but in the cloud computing era, we’re outsourcing the management of everything connected with computing – hardware, software, reliability, backup, the whole shooting match, to suppliers of specialist software and platforms.

It’s an exciting opportunity, one that brings with it new features and capabilities, but also new risks and concerns.  I hope that you’re able to join me on Friday to find out more…