Most civil society organisations are now using cloud computing in some way, but lack of knowledge is a key barrier to future development, according to a global survey carried out by Techsoup Global and its international partners including CTT in the UK.

The percentage of respondents using cloud-based applications in Western Europe is 91 per cent, two points below Australia/New Zealand and the US and Canada. India had the lowest uptake of cloud applications with 83 per cent.

More than half (53 per cent) of organisations surveyed revealed that they planned to move a “significant portion” of their IT to the cloud over the next three years. Some 36 per cent of NGOs have no plans to move a significant portion into the cloud and 11 per cent plan for it to take more than three years.

Overall there were 10,500 respondents from 88 different countries.  There were 155 responses from UK charities.

The most popular uses of cloud-based apps are email (55 per cent) and social networking (47 per cent). The least popular uses were for compliance (2 per cent) disaster recovery (3 per cent), volunteer management, security, human resources and grant management (all 4 per cent).

The survey found that the main reasons for moving to the cloud are to reduce costs and for easier customisation and integration.

Almost one-third plan to adopt file storage/sharing cloud-based applications, 30 per cent plan to adopt email and 25 per cent plan to use data backup/disaster recovery solutions. Fewer organisations plan to adopt donor management (11 per cent), volunteer management (10 per cent) or grant management applications (9 per cent).

Lack of knowledge is the biggest barrier to expanding the use cloud-based applications, with 60 per cent of respondents citing this as a reason. Other barriers include cost, data security, and lack of trust.

The survey defined cloud usage as: “The use of one or more cloud-based applications to perform a particular function, or the use of specific vendors or specific branded cloud applications.”

CTT and Techsoup will use the data to inform their decisions about the development of future services.

Techsoup Global co-CEO Rebecca Masisak said: “By sharing the voices of NGOs with the sector as a whole, this survey will allow us to better use cloud computing to improve organisations’ effectiveness, collaboration, and access to data.”

The full report can be downloaded from here.