Cloud computing

For those of you that are using such tools as Google Apps, Salesforce, Facebook, Office Live, you are using the cloud.

Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.”

Let me tell you what that really means. Let me break out some of the keywords here.

Service-based. First of all, the cloud is service-based. It is like electricity. As consumers, electricity is a service to us. We do not have to worry about the lines running through the street or how the electricity gets to our house. We just worry about flipping the switch at the right time. That is the service: it is there for us when we want to flip the switch at the right time. This is different from other kinds of software where we buy the box and we have to worry about installing and maintaining it. We have to support the entire infrastructure that goes into keeping that piece of software running. With cloud-based software, they are responsible for making sure that it runs, that it is on a server, that it is backed up, and that you can get access. All you have to do is log in and use it. That is a really big implication for nonprofits.

Scalable and elastic. The second thing is that it is scalable and elastic. What this means for us as nonprofits, is that cloud providers can add lots of capacity really quickly, or scale up; scalable. When that thing hits and you are a welfare organization and an oil spill happens and you are suddenly cleaning up four hundred pounds of pelicans a day, you have the capacity now to enter in five times the number of records you used to enter into your database. Your website can handle five times the traffic it used to because your provider can see that your traffic is going up, your use is going up, and allow you more usage. It is elastic in a sense that when that need goes away, it can shrink back down.

Shared. It is also shared. This is also a big difference between the cloud and our old sense of software. Sharing allows the economy to scale so when you are using Salesforce or Facebook, you are using the same version of Salesforce or Facebook. (The underpinnings are all the same, no matter how many apps you want to pile on top of it). You are using the same base code that every single client of that service is using. This means that everyone gets upgrades, updates and service improvements when they are available. So instead of waiting every three years for an application to be developed by someone and then rolled out, we get those changes on a rolling basis and everyone gets them.

Metered. They are also metered, which we pay for use. This makes enterprise-level software, really good quality products, available to really small shops because you just pay for what you use as opposed to having to invest x number of dollars just to get access.

Internet technology. The last thing is that it is delivered via the internet. What is so wonderful about this for us in our work is that means that we can access these tools no matter where we are as long as we can get an Internet connection. That makes it much easier to support that remote work force; they can log in from anywhere, they do not have to be at the office.

Implications of cloud computing

The cloud is really interesting and has a lot of implications for us. Because the providers are taking care of the server and all that good stuff for you, and all you have to do is login, you can concentrate on optimizing that piece of software for your mission versus maintaining it. You can think a lot more about how that database it is going to help you meet your mission rather than keeping that server going. It also means that you can provide the level of service your organization needs as soon as you need it and that is something IT staff has a hard time doing. You cannot just suddenly increase your bandwidth or quadruple your server storage capacity with an internal IT department. You get more updates with less work from you.

And studies show it tends to be the fact that the TCO, the Total Cost for Ownership for software, is much lower, at least in the short term. So the first few years you invest in cloud services, like a cloud-based database like Salesforce, or a cloud-based Office Apps like Google Apps or Office Live, it costs you less to use those services for the first few years -- or at least so far, because that is all the data we have -- than it does for you to buy the equivalent product in a box and support and maintain it and keep it going.

So those are some really important implications for the cloud and it is going to change the way we do our work, it is going to bring us closer to our clients if we adopt these things.

That is what it all boils down to, global data in the clouds, a free flow of data. We are going to have all this data that can flow around the Internet and be persistent across multiple devices. We can access our Salesforce database on our mobile phone and then move that data around however we want. It is going to be really exciting times. There is tremendous potential here for organizations to perform better than they ever have. It is the most extreme kind of operation, so that we are more efficient and able to deliver our services and programs in new ways so that we are more effective.

References

The foundation for this article are excerpts from a presentation by Holly Ross on June 9, 2010 at the World Congress of NGOs.