ITWire

David Spriggs, general manager of Melbourne based Infoxchange, acknowledged that the 50 per cent Office 365 discount that was available for charities from Microsoft was a carrot, but added that the cloud concept was fundamentally attractive to not-for-profits which had little time, money or people to throw at technology.

He said that the reliability and cost of cloud computing were the two big drawcards. In addition not-for-profit companies liked the idea that they did not have to lug around their data with them, or work out of the office, but could use computers anywhere anytime to link to their cloud based data.

Mr Spriggs said that Infoxchange had worked with a range of not-for-profit organisations to build awareness of cloud computing, and also provided implementation services.

He said that while the issue of where the cloud was based had come up as a question – Office 365 is hosted for Australian users out of Singapore – it had not held back any organisation’s adoption of the cloud.

“Where there has been an issue we have done a risk assessment so that they understand the cloud is actually much much more secure (than an in house alternative),” he said.