The TechSoup Blog : GreenTech

RCI Free End-Of-Life Takeback Program

jimlynch — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:52:00 GMT

The big computer makers are not the only ones who offer free and responsible end-of-life recycling of their PCs that have finally reached the end of their usefulness. TechSoup’s Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) does as well. Just like Dell and HP, we want make sure that our RCI computers are as environmentally responsible as possible at no extra cost to nonprofits and libraries.

I think it’s pretty well known that TechSoup supplies refurbished computers to nonprofits and libraries in the United States through our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI), which provides reliable, warrantied desktop and laptop computers. What is not so well-known is our free recycling program for our RCI PCs when folks are done with them.

Our RCI free end-of-life takeback program is really due to our great refurbishment partners, Redemtech and InterConnection. Both refurbishers offer free takeback in the same way.

How Does Takeback Work with TechSoup RCI Machines?

When your RCI PC is no longer useful to you, just have a look at the sticker on the machine and it will tell you what website to go to in order to request a takeback. Here’s how it works:

Once on the takeback website, fill out a request form, or in the case of Interconnection send an email to takeback@interconnection.org with the tracking number of the RCI piece of equipment.
Our refurbisher will verify that it’s an RCI computer and then send you a prepaid mailing label. You then put the PC in any box that it will fit in, pack some newspaper around it, seal it up, and then mail it in. That’s it.
PCs will be then have their hard drives cleaned of all your data (even if you’ve already done that yourself), and then responsibly recycled to reclaim the metals, plastic, and glass that they’re made from.

Both of our refurbishers are certified by one of the two programs that the U.S. EPA encourages that everyone use. Redemtech is certified under e-Stewards. InterConnection is certified under the R2 (Responsible Recycling Practices) Program.

Both are independent third-party certification programs that ensure responsible recycling of used electronics. They require that best management practices are in place so that used electronics are processed according to environmental standards that minimize exposure to human health or the environment, ensure safe management of materials by downstream handlers, and require destruction of all data on used electronics.

It’s TechSoup’s long-time environmental position on IT to encourage extending the life IT equipment as long as possible through refurbishment, and then when devices have eventually outlived their usefulness for them to be responsibly recycled.

Cool App Roundup: Office Apps for Smartphones

jimlynch — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:13:00 GMT

One of the great things about smartphones is that they are so easy to carry around. They’re especially convenient for email. Too bad it’s so hard to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files on them – or is it? Check out some cool apps that do just that.

Mobile Apps for Office Productivity

Early in December, Matthew Miller of ZDnet did a good comprehensive piece comparing some major office apps, including DataViz’s Documents To Go, Kingsoft Office, OfficeSuite Pro, Polaris Office comes from Infraware, Quickoffice Pro, and ThinkFree Office.

All of them view office documents including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on various types of smartphones, but to varying degrees of effectiveness. The usual price for such apps is now around $10 each but some of them come preloaded on several models of smartphones at no cost. Those include ThinkFree Office, Quickoffice, and Polarus Office.

The most expensive office app, at $30 (but often discounted) and according to Matthew Miller, the best app for working with office documents on the small screen is DataViz’s Documents To Go. It renders documents well on the screen, nearly as well as on a laptop, and allows users to do a surprising amount of formatting, particularly within Word docs. Its formatting includes bold, italics, underline, font color, alignment, bulleted and numbered lists, tables, bookmarks, comments, footnotes, endnotes, track-changes, word count, find and replace, and more. It basically allows users to view, edit, and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents to the extent that you’re up to it with a tiny keyboard.

Impressive as Documents To Go is, I was also interested to see what the $0.99 app, Kingsoft Office, does. You can view and edit Word and Excel files but just view PowerPoint files. With Kingsoft Office you can:

View all documents
Browse folders
Access cloud storage
Create a new document (Word and Excel only)
Duplicate an existing document
Email a document
Send a document to the cloud
Delete a document
View help files (launches web browser to help site)

Not bad. You can also view documents with the free version of the app.

OfficeSuite Pro 5 is a $10 app that looks like it does most of what DataViz’s Documents To Go does. It allows you to create Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents and do a good deal of formatting in them. It also offers a fully functional 30 day trial version.

Polaris Office is a very basic app that views office documents and permits a bit of editing. It’s one of those apps that often comes preloaded on many models of smartphones.

Matthew Miller says that the $10 Quickoffice Pro is his favorite app for his iPad. It’s a full-featured office app that views and creates Word, Excel, and PowerPoint office documents. The differentiating factor for this app is its text-to-speech function in which the thing reads your document to you. It is also well-integrated and can store documents in the cloud to several services including Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, Evernote, Huddle, and several others.

He also reviewed the $10 ThinkFree Office but found it the least cool office app of the bunch.

Here are Matthew Miller's basic findings:

Documents To Go: Near desktop quality with all format options and track changes. No security and limited cloud support.
Kingsoft Office: Very inexpensive and fairly full featured. Limited cloud support and lame Excel function capability.
OfficeSuite Pro: Comes in very strong with an attractive user interface, password protection and security in documents, and support for Excel chart creation.
Polaris Office: Decent viewer with print support, but not visually appealing with clunky user interface.
Quickoffice Pro: Excellent functionality with the best cloud service support and many things in the advanced table.
ThinkFree Office: Broken with latest update, but looks to support basic editing needs.

Are you using an office app on your phone or tablet computer? What do you think? What are your favorite apps and what features do you use most for your organization?

NetSquared Congratulates Our All-Stars!

laneystrange — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:50:00 GMT

Over on the NetSquared blog, we’ve just announced the winner of the 2011 Net2 All-Star Invitational, an event we hosted to highlight the work and impact of NetSquared social innovation projects. We want to offer our congratulations to the winners: the folks at Open Green Map!

Open Green Map is a social mapping tool for anyone who loves ecology and embraces green living. Their entry in the Net2 invitational was a short video they produced that tells the story of their work, their successes, and where they’re going. Supported by a community vote and the endorsement of our NetSquared team, we are happy to announce that Open Green Map has won the event!

Read more about the winner and the Net2 All-Star Invitational on the NetSquared blog, and check out the winning video here.

Refurbishment Arrives on the Big Stage

jimlynch — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:12:00 GMT

This past July the Obama Administration announced its National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship. It is the United States' first comprehensive policy that addresses the proper handling of used or discarded electronics devices.

The policy is designed to increase industrial capacity in electronics recycling, refurbishment, and remanufacturing to increase the number of US-based green jobs and the safe handling of discarded electronics. Electronics refurbishment has truly arrived on the big national stage as an important part of the electronics recycling industry.

How the National Strategy Came About

The new national strategy covers the design and manufacture of electronics devices all the way through to end of life – essentially a crade-to-grave approach. It affects manufacturers, electronics recyclers, refurbishers, all US federal government agencies, and also government contractors. A federal Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stewardship developed the national strategy. President Obama directed the Task Force with preparing the National Strategy in a 2010 Presidential Proclamation.

What the National Strategy Will Do

This new policy will expand and strengthen the work of EPEAT, an online registry for institutions and consumers to find out which IT equipment uses less energy and fewer toxic substances. It also takes steps to ensure that discarded federal IT equipment is not improperly exported. This includes strengthening participation by the United States in the Basel Convention, which controls improper export of electronics equipment to developing countries.

Most importantly to electronics refurbishers and end-of-life recyclers, the national strategy strongly empowers two new certification programs for proper handling of used IT equipment: R2 and e-Stewards. Both certification programs require recyclers and refurbishers to undergo third-party audits to complex standards that ensure worker safety, complete data destruction from hard drives, and proper downstream disposal of all e-waste.

All government agencies and any business or nonprofit under government contract or grant will be required to use an R2 or e-Stewards certified recycler or refurbisher for their discarded electronics equipment.

TechSoup’s RCI Refurbishers

TechSoup’s Refurbished Computer Initiative’s (RCI) refurbishment partners are already certified refurbishers or are in process. All of Redemtech’s facilities in the United States are certified under the e-Stewards standard. InterConnection is being certified under R2 and is expected to have their process completed by the end of 2011.

The Role of Reuse and Refurbishment

Reuse and refurbishment of electronics is mentioned throughout the national strategy in accordance with the “reduce, reuse, and recycle hierarchy” (in that order) that emphasizes the priority of reuse over recycling whenever possible.

The national strategy directs EPEAT to work with manufacturers to design their products to be much more repairable, more modular, and also easier to disassemble so that devices have long useful lives and for product design to facilitate reuse through multiple users. The strategy also encourages reuse in another sense: to recover and reuse valuable materials like metals, rare earth elements, so they can be used in domestic manufacturing and so encourage job growth.

The United States doesn’t yet have a unified national electronics recycling system like the European Union does, but the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship is a major step in that direction. The strong integration of electronics reuse and refurbishment in the standard bodes well for having a truly environmental recycling system some day.

Photo: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson visits Round2 electronics recycling facility in Texas to help announce the Obama Administration's National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship, usepagov.

Building Refurbished Computers with Volunteers at InterConnection

jimlynch — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:55:00 GMT

This week we’d like to introduce you to a unique TechSoup Refurbished Computer Initiative partner, InterConnection, a nonprofit computer refurbisher in Seattle. What, you may ask, makes InterConnection unique?

I’m so glad you asked. InterConnection is a nonprofit refurbisher that has figured out how to do two things very, very well. It refurbishes IT equipment to very high standards with a largely volunteer workforce, and it is a model program for responsible export of refurbished IT equipment in to developing countries.

Global Impact of InterConnection's Programs

The program was started in 1999 by Charles Brennick, who still runs the organization. To date, InterConnection has shipped over 20,000 computers and monitors to organizations around the world and properly recycled nearly 100,000 computers. They do this work so capably that Microsoft Community Affairs has commissioned them on multiple occasions to refurbish and send their computer donations to NGOs and schools all over the world.

InterConnection has also worked with the U.S Peace Corp numerous times. I was going to list all the countries where they send computers, but it’s just too long. During the past few years, InterConnection has also participated in supplying badly needed IT equipment to disaster stricken areas like Chile, Haiti and Pakistan, and Japan. Suffice to say that they’re a leader in the U.S. on responsible export of refurbished computers to the developing world.

In the course of doing this work, InterConnection also trains people to learn how to do IT repair work at no cost to the trainees and trainees also receive a free computer upon successful completion of their course.

To date, more than 1,000 people have participated in this social enterprise at InterConnection’s Computer Reuse Center. Most of the computers that the organization works on are donated by local companies and residents.

Building Quality Refurbished Computers with Volunteers

We got to know Charles Brennick much better in the course of working together on a Microsoft IT equipment donation to NGOs in Romania a couple of years ago. Matthew Halden of TechSoup and I visited his Computer Reuse Center in Seattle and were very impressed at how InterConnection manages to employ a staff of professionals and volunteers to produce top-grade refurbished equipment.

The quality control systems that Charles and his team have created so that people who are learning on the job can produce grade-A refurbished equipment is pretty astonishing.

In seeing that nonprofit refurbishment can produce results as good as commercial refurbishment, we approached Charles about participating as a refurbishment partner with our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI). We’re now working together on another large Microsoft donation of IT equipment going to the Czech Republic for people with disabilities.

InterConnection now supplies RCI with warrantied laptops and desktop computers that go to nonprofits and libraries in the United States. InterConnection also runs a free RCI end-of-life Take Back Program, in which nonprofits and libraries that receive RCI computers can have them responsibly recycled at no cost.

It is truly an honor for us to have the chance to work with a place like Interconnection.

Photos: InterConnection.org

Is the Used Computer Market Going Away?

jimlynch — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:49:00 GMT

This is an update of a TechSoup article we posted online in September 2009. During those two years, not only has the used computer market been in question, but also there has been major buzz in the IT press about whether or not we're entering a “post-PC” era.

The post-PC era was announced in March 2011 by the late Apple founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, during the launch of the iPad2.

By "post-PC," Jobs meant essentially that computing and Internet use for both work and pleasure will no longer be dominated by PCs, but that there will be an array of smart devices including smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, laptops, and even sensing devices in our clothes and cars and other every day items.

The post-PC world was inadvertently ratified by HP when it made a dramatic announcement in August 2011 about trying to get out of the PC hardware business.

How Does This Impact the Used Computer Market?

The used computer market essentially starts with new computers. As Jake Player of the large IT asset recovery company TechTurn says, “there is a direct correlation between the growth of the new PC market and the growth of the used PC market.”

In other words, if the new PC market grows by by 9% worldwide in 2012 as is forecast by the business research firm IDC, then the used PC market will grow as well.

IDC has forecast that from 2009 to 2014, worldwide IT spending will increase from $360 billion to $460 billion, a 5% compound annual growth rate. Thus, it continues the decades-long trend that IT spending has an increasing share of the global economy.

PC shipments in 2015 will be 52 percent higher than PC shipments in 2010.

Forrester Research has also found that total shipments of desktop and laptop computers will continue to rise through 2015. Laptops of various types will be the dominant form factor (42 percent), tablets next (23 percent), and desktop computers will gradually decline in market share. With so many IT devices increasingly in use, strong markets for used equipment are developing worldwide.

How Long Can Refurbishment Last with New Product Pricing Decreases?

The main concerns about the used PC market are the falling prices of new IT equipment. How long the used computer market can last, given the diminishing prices of new equipment?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the refurbished computer’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Nor are those rumors anything new. Bruce Buckelew of OTX West, which supplies refurbished computers to low-income students in Oakland, California, recalls the "decline and fall" of the computer refurbishment field 20 years ago.

Below, I’ll describe some recent research on the used, or "secondary," marketplace as well as some of the trends that address the viability of the refurbished computer market.

Refurbishment and the Environment

We at TechSoup have for a long time been fervent advocates for refurbished PCs. They're low-cost, they work well for many purposes, and there's a brilliant environmental case for electronics reuse. Three- to-five-year-old computers are fast, powerful, and adaptable enough to meet the needs of organizations and individuals who need them.

It is roughly 25 times more environmentally beneficial to extend the life of used, three-to-five year-old computers than it is to end-of-life recycle them at that age.

In his book Natural Capitalism, author Paul Hawken writes that when you discard a five-pound laptop, you are also throwing away 20,000 pounds of raw materials it took to make it.

Obviously, not every computer can be salvaged, and your organization shouldn’t accept just any used computer for the sake of environmental responsibility. Yet, for many purposes, refurbished equipment presents nonprofits, libraries, and lower-income families with a more affordable alternative to new equipment; one that will do nearly everything that new computers do.

Growing Supply, Increasing Demand

How robust is the used computer market and is it trending down or up? Current research indicates that there is increasing demand worldwide for used computers. IT and telecom research firm Gartner Dataquest found that the secondary PC market is growing rapidly: 55 million PCs worldwide in 2004; and 86 million 2007.

Gartner also found that of the nearly 200 million PCs that were retired by corporations and institutions in 2007, fewer than half found their way into the secondary PC market. Moreover, the research firm also found that demand remains larger than supply.

Supply. In 2005, Gartner Group’s initial study of the secondary PC market entitled "Thriving Secondary PC Market Puts Old PCs to Good Use," found that more than 75 percent of PCs replaced out of the corporate install base in the U.S. are four years old or less, yet only 36 percent continue to be used.

There is growth room on the supply side of the secondary PC market.

Demand. In Gartner’s sister study "Thirst for Technology Drives Used PC Emerging Markets," they predicted an increased demand for secondary PCs in both the home and professional markets.

A 2008 update on these initial reports, User Survey Analysis: Secondary PC Market Offers Growing Opportunity, continues to support both the supply and demand growth projections. It finds that:

Only one in five PCs suitable for reuse finds its way from a mature to a developing country market, even as demand for secondary PCs outstrips the available supply. The demand for used PCs will remain substantial, even though regional demand patterns will probably shift again as emerging markets mature and new emerging markets join the demand queue for secondary PCs.

Another Gartner study found that export tariffs and high transportation costs tend to restrict secondary PC markets.

One of the best measures of market growth in PC refurbishment to low-income Americans and people in the rest of the world is the growth in software sales in the Microsoft Registered Refurbisher Program and the Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers Program (MAR). These programs provide low-cost Windows XP licensing to 2,500 PC refurbishers in 80 countries, who in turn supply computers to low-income individuals, schools, and charities.

Ordering in the program has been steadily increasing from the program’s inception in 2000. From 2007 to 2008, the Community MAR program had a 57 percent volume increase worldwide. In the recession year of 2009, order volume increased 16 percent. Order volumes have increased 25 percent in 2011.

More Power, Lower Prices

Yet, as the price of new computers continues to fall, will they at some point be just as or more affordable than used equipment?

While it is true that the price of new computers has decreased over the years, refurbished equipment still remains a more affordable option. TechSoup’s Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI), for example, has been tracking the price of refurbished computers since 2005. During this time, we have found that the price of three-year-old Dell Optiplex computers has fluctuated between one-half to one-third of that of new Dell Optiplex computers.

Currently, our RCI Dell Optiplex machines are about half the price of the new models, and perform the essential functions that nonprofits and libraries need of their computers: web browsing, email, office applications, social networking, and accounting. Moreover, refurbishers are increasingly offering warranties and comparable fail rates as with new equipment.

Microsoft’s Manager of Refurbishment, Sean Nicholson, estimates that the used laptop market worldwide will grow in developing countries rapidly.

Refurbishers in emerging markets will start to see a higher supply of laptops for refurbishment. Because they are much cheaper to transport, laptop prices will come down, and they will start appearing in the larger markets in emerging economy countries.

The Future of Refurbishment

The IT market will undoubtedly change with new developments like cloud computing and the current trend of consumerization of IT in which personal consumer devices like smart phones and tablet devices like iPads are being integrated in to the work place.

It means, however, that large numbers of PCs and also consumer devices of different types will be going in to used market. Someday, I guess, used PCs and other IT equipment will be a rarity.

Futurist Raymond Kurzweil envisions a time when three-dimensional molecular microprocessors will be commonly implanted in our brains for the purpose of intelligence and physical amplification. I suspect that even then, there may well be a decent market for low-cost used computer implants.

Photo: Roger Smith and /tiian

Cloud Computing Tweet Chat Recap

elliotharmon — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:03:00 GMT

On November 2, we wrapped up our Cloud Computing Worldwide campaign with a tweet chat on cloud computing for nonprofits, NGOs, and public libraries. TechSoup.org coproduced the chat with our partners TechSoup Canada and Connecting Up Australia. It was a great chat, made even more interesting by the diverse perspectives of participants in five different countries.

People had a lot to say about the roles that cloud computing plays in their organizations. Many participants agreed that sharing documents in the cloud over services like Google Docs simplifies working together: you can access your documents from anywhere and don't need to worry about the headaches that can arise from sending documents back and forth via email.

I mentioned one way the cloud has been transformational in my work: it makes it much easier to collaborate with people outside of the organization. It's easy and relatively low-risk to invite an ally outside the organization to join a Basecamp project or view some Office Web Apps documents; getting someone set up on your VPN is a more complicated ordeal, organizationally and technologically, that requires considerably more trust. At its best, the cloud provides for a more lightweight, less formal kind of collaboration than a traditional technology infrastructure.

Interestingly, several participants reported that working in the cloud assuages the need for continual in-person interaction. According to JJ King, "Our organisation has become less engaged on a human-to-human level, but increased communication efficiency. I was curious, so I asked him if he saw that as an entirely good thing. "We just need volunteers engaged on the issues," he replied. "Not free trips."

Similarly, TheDeafGuy related that being a deaf guy, cloud-based collaboration tools make it easier for him to collaborate with his team than he can in person. That's interesting to me: when we discuss collaboration tools, we often focus on how well a tool can approximate face-to-face collaboration; in reality, there are many things possible in an online setting that aren't possible in an office, and many people who can be included more easily.

Like JJ, a number of people voiced the benefits of connecting with volunteers via the cloud. As Nerida Gill pointed out, "We see people moving to cloud accounting to avoid loss of data from volunteer treasurers' home computers."

But, as Jon Hardie interjected, it's not that easy. If different teams and working groups in an organization all migrate to the cloud separately without any visibility into each other's work, then the cloud will only make those silos in organizational culture worse. As my colleague Nick Eyre put it in this excellent blog post, "If an organisation's work is spread haphazardly among multiple incompatible systems, then the cloud won't help it. Its cloud-based infrastructures will simply be replicas of their current, poorly planned ICT setups."

In a way, it all leads back to one key question: can cloud computing change organizational boundaries? And the answer seems to be a resounding sort of. If your organization has a solid technology plan in place, the cloud can offer excellent opportunities to work more quickly and malleably. But the cloud won't fix a broken technology plan.

Thanks to Connecting Up Australia's Shai Coggins, Ryan Jones, and Ben Teoh; TechSoup Canada's Tierney Smith and Jane Zhang; and TechSoup.org's Kristy Graves and Evonne Heyning for making this international tweet chat a success.

Refurbished Computers for Nonprofit Serving Homeless

jimlynch — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:20:00 GMT

Refurbished computers are not for every organization, so we thought it’d be interesting to talk to someone who is using refurbished equipment in their nonprofit to find out how it’s going.

This is an interview between Keli Sullivan, TechSoup’s RCI Program specialist and Candice Erdmann, information manager, at Transition Projects in Portland, Oregon.

The mission of Transition Projects is to help people to transition from homelessness to permanent housing. The organization operates three emergency shelters and also provides free clothing, showers, bus tickets, rent assistance, computer access, job search assistance and many other things to help people become stabilized in their housing.

Candice has a masters degree in library and information science and is Transition Projects’ first formal IT person. She has been there just under five years. Keli gets to talk to many people on the phone who use TechSoup’s Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) to get low-cost refurbished computers. Here is their conversation:

Keli: How long has your organization been using refurbished computers?

Candice: This is our first experience with refurbished equipment. In June of this year (2011) we obtained 26 computers through the RCI Program at TechSoup. So far, it’s been a great experience.

Keli: What do you use them for?

Candice: The computers have been distributed throughout our organization and currently serve three predominant needs. Aside from some of them being used by our staff for internal organization functionality, some of them are used by our program partners.

We have different agencies that come to assist the individuals in our program with things such as job search assistance and other life skills and basic needs. And we have been able to build a computer lab with a third of the computers obtained through the RCI Program. The computer lab offers accessibility for folks to do basic functions such as checking emails and searching for jobs. The public library also utilizes the lab to provide a computer training class.

Keli: Tell me a bit about your experience with the RCI program.

Candice: The experience has been good, overall from start to finish. I was on the TechSoup website seeking vendor and software recommendations when I came across an RCI highlight. I looked into the program and found the program pages to be comprehensive enough to investigate further.

I contacted the RCI program via email and was called by one of the program specialists. She explained the ins and outs of the program to me and was able to answer all of my questions. The program met our needs and though I was a little reluctant at first in buying refurbished equipment, however, because of previous positive experiences with TSG, I proceeded. I received assistance throughout the entire process.

Keli: Do you have any recommendations for other nonprofits out there on how to integrate refurbished IT equipment in to their work?

Candice: We actually used these computers to expand our existing IT assets. I would certainly recommend using the refurbished equipment offered through the RCI program. There is nothing particularly different than new equipment (outside of the financial savings and environmental benefits). We had no difficulties integrating these systems into the existing network. The set up was exactly the same as it would have been with a new in the box system. It’s been a great experience every step of the way with the RCI program.

Photo: pal_pics

Environmental Case for Refurbished IT Equipment

jimlynch — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:40:00 GMT

One of our missions at TechSoup Global is to supply low-cost refurbished IT equipment to nonprofits and libraries. That in itself is good and useful, but a surprising additional aspect of this is that refurbished and remanufactured electronic devices provide the most environmentally friendly way to acquire and use computers and other IT equipment.

The Basis for the Environmental Benefits of Refurbished IT

The scientific basis for the environmental case for refurbished IT equipment is primarily from Dr. Eric Williams of Rochester Institute of Technology in his book, co-authored with Ruediger Kuehr, Computers and the Environment, Understanding and Managing Their Impacts.

In it, they find that the environmental cost to produce a computer and monitor is immense, especially for microprocessors. Producing the average 53-pound desktop computer and CRT monitor requires 530 pounds of fossil fuels, 50 pounds of chemicals, and 3,330 pounds of water.

Adding additional life to computers saves 5 to 20 times more energy than recycling over the computer's life cycle. It's much better for the environment to extend the life of a computer for an extra two or three years than to buy a new one every three to four years.

The thing I found perhaps most interesting in the Williams and Kuehr findings is that 75 percent of PC energy consumption has already happened before a new computer is ever switched on. It is used up in the production phase. If this equipment has a six or seven year lifespan rather than three or four years, the environmental impact of this for even a fraction of the one billion plus computers now in use in the world will be immense.

Half the Periodic Table in That PC or Mobile Phone

The green argument for electronics reuse goes beyond Williams and Kuehr, however. Paul Hawkin, in his book, Natural Capitalism, finds that the volume of material that goes into manufacturing a laptop is 4,000 to 1. When you discard a 5 pound laptop you are also throwing away the 20,000 pounds of raw materials it took to make it.

The hundreds of raw materials that are needed to make electronics devices have an incredibly long and complex supply chain. They must come from mines and factories from all over the world. The University of Illinois Sustainable Electronics Initiative estimates that each PC or mobile phone contains about half the periodic table.

How Much Does Reuse Save?

The EPA's Electronics Environmental Benefits Calculator shows environmental savings for computer recycling and reuse in terms of energy, materials, CO2, toxic emissions, and more. It finds that it is roughly 25 times more beneficial environmentally to reuse computers than to recycle them at 3 to 5 years of age.

Recent lifecycle assessment work by Eric Munsing of PE International has found that in more energy efficient devices like laptops, tablets and mobile phones, the environmental benefit of extending the useful life of these devices only increases. More energy and resources are expended in their manufacturing phase.

How Does Refurbished Equipment Stack Up?

The environmental case for electronics reuse aside, one question that always crops up is how refurbished IT equipment compares with new equipment in terms of performance. Most of us have been frustrated by using a three or four year old computer that takes forever to start up and do simple things like open a web page or send an email message. The main reason for this is that over time, software degrades or corrupts, developing interoperability conflicts and many other glitches.

A machine that is repaired, cleaned out, and has fresh software installed that is native to it pretty much runs as well as the day it was new. One important thing to know is that a four-year-old computer needs software that runs well on four-year-old equipment, and not the latest software versions.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that most people do four or five things on computers: email, internet browsing, accounting, multimedia (video and music), and office applications like word processing. Three or four year old equipment does all of that easily.

At TechSoup Global another of our missions is to ensure that the refurbished IT equipment that we offer undergoes state-of-the art refurbishment.

Our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) supplies warrantied refurbished laptop and desktop computers to nonprofits and public libraries. The computers come with Windows 7 and Microsoft Office. The RCI program also offers free end-of-life takeback and recycling via our refurbishment partners, Redemtech and Interconnection, which is about as environmentally beneficial as it gets.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user lungstruck.

Cloud Computing Worldwide

elliotharmon — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:24:00 GMT

All this month, join TechSoup.org and the TechSoup Global Network for our Cloud Computing Worldwide campaign. Check back throughout the month for blog posts, webinars, and dispatches from around the world on cloud computing for nonprofits, NGOs, and public libraries.

Sign up for TechSoup's email newsletters and discover great resources, ideas, and donated technology for nonprofits and public libraries.

Mark your calendar! Join TechSoup Canada for a free webinar about cloud computing on Thursday, October 27.

Mark your calendar again! Join us for a TweetChat on cloud computing for nonprofits on Wednesday, November 2.

Week 4: The Future of Cloud Computing

A View of the Cloud from the United States
Learn how American nonprofits are using the cloud today, and how that will change over the next few years.

Big Data and the Cloud: What's the Link?
Keisha Taylor of GuideStar International reflects that as more nonprofits move into the cloud, the importance of data to the sector becomes more pronounced.

A View of the Cloud from the NetSquared Community
Even among technologically inclined people, there's sometimes a reluctance to move to the cloud. But maybe that's not a bad thing.

Shawn Michael on Dynamics CRM Online for Nonprofits
In this guest blog post, Shawn Michael of NPower Oregon discusses Dynamics CRM Online. Is a move to cloud-based CRM right for your organization?

Week 3: Security in the Cloud

A View of the Cloud from India
Most NGOs in India are small and highly dependent on volunteers. Prashant Pandit and Pooja Jayna of the NASSCOM Foundation (TechSoup's Indian partner organization) discuss the hurdles that NGOs must overcome for cloud adoption to become a reality.

A View of the Cloud from Poland
Alicja Peszkowska of Fundacja TechSoup (TechSoup Global's European headquarters in Warsaw) observes that although most Polish NGOs use some cloud-based tools, most of them haven't explored the cloud's full potential.

Security in the Cloud
Security is one of the largest concerns when considering a move of a system or application to the Internet. Learn how to protect your organization.

Security: The Scary Part of Cloud Computing
Recent security breaches in the cloud have made headlines, but the greatest security risk to nonprofits is still human negligence.

Why Are We So Scared of Cloud Security?
Richard Cooper of Charity Technology Trust (TechSoup's partner organization in the United Kingdom) suggests that nonprofits be realistic when weighing the risks of cloud computing.

Week 2: How Cloud Computing Changes Organizations

Can Cloud Computing Change Organizational Boundaries?
Some people say that cloud computing can radically change how organizations work and collaborate. Does cloud computing shift organizational culture, or is it really business as usual?

Email in the Cloud: A Google Apps Case Study
Learn how a cloud-based solution helped one Canadian nonprofit work more efficiently. For more information, check out TechSoup Canada's recorded webinar on Google Apps.

How the Cloud Can Make a Difference for Disaster Relief
Find out how Second Harvest Japan used cloud-based technologies to serve Japanese communities when disaster struck.

Reach for the Cloud with Microsoft Services

Connecting Up Australia (TechSoup's partner organization in Australia) shows how Microsoft's cloud services and desktop products work together.

Week 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing

A View of the Cloud from Brazil
In the first of our series of dispatches from our international partner organizations, TechSoup Brasil's Valter Cegal reflects that Internet affordability is still a major stumbling block for Brazilian NGOs. He suggests that individuals will make the move to the cloud more quickly than organizations.

Why Should Nonprofits Care About Cloud Computing?
If you are a small to medium-sized nonprofit, why should you care about cloud computing? Because it can save you time, money, and help spare the environment. Be sure to check out the companion webinar recording, Cloud Computing: Why You Should Care.

Cloud Basics for Nonprofits and Libraries
What is cloud computing anyway, and what does it mean for your organization? Learn about the types of cloud computing and the advantages and drawbacks of implementing cloud-based solutions at your organization.

Clearing Up the Cloud
NTEN recently hosted a day-long cloud computing workshop in San Francisco. Read our reflections on the opportunities and challenges of cloud adoption for nonprofits.

Cloud Is Not a Technology Decision
Richard Cooper of Charity Technology Trust (TechSoup's partner organization in the United Kingdom) argues that cloud computing is primarily a business decision, not a technology decision.

A View of the Cloud from Poland

jimlynch — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:52:00 GMT

During the month of October, join TechSoup.org and the TechSoup Global Network for our Cloud Computing Worldwide campaign. Check back throughout the month for blog posts, webinars, and dispatches from around the world on cloud computing for nonprofits, NGOs, and public libraries.

This is a communiqué from Alicja Peszkowska of Fundacja TechSoup in Warsaw, which is TechSoup Global's European headquarters. Poland is the ninth largest country in Europe with a population roughly equivalent to California (37 million). The country has one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union; GDP per capita in Poland, however, is 61% of the EU average.

Fundacja TechSoup was established by TechSoup Global in 2009 as an independent Polish foundation with public benefit status, with the focus of supporting the development of civil society. The organization hosts a range of programs including our Polish Technologie Non-Profit Donations Program and Community Driven Innovation. Based out of Warsaw, Alicja works as a communications specialist and community manager. Alicja is one of our technology writers at NetSquared.org and she also does social media outreach. Here is her view of the cloud from Poland.

Cloud computing has been around since the Internet, and everyone who is connected uses it one way or another. If you asked someone in a Polish NGO if they know about or are using the cloud, they probably wouldn't know what you are talking about. I had the chance to visit some Polish NGOs recently to find out more about how they do their IT work. I visited W.A.R.K.A. Association, Association for the Development of the Kozietuły Village, and the Association for The Future of Our Children in Izabelin Górki. Like so many NGOs worldwide, each of them very much wanted more ICT know-how.

Would You Know It's a Cloud Service When You Use It?

Many Polish NGOs are already well-acquainted with basic cloud computing without realizing it. They send and receive emails, use mailing lists, and host websites on a cloud. Polish NGOs also often use online, outsourced services such as legal services or accounting.

Platform as Avant-Garde

Some NGOs go beyond software as a service (SaaS) solutions by using web 2.0 and social platforms. Polish NGOs use cloud-based social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Just a few months ago, a decentralized Local Groups Leaders Association received a prize for its social platform. Its purpose is to connect a distributed group of contributors and update them on strategic decisions. Nevertheless, among small local NGOs, online sharing is still commonly considered to be an online avant-garde.

Size Matters When Buying Into Cloud

NGOs that use cloud came in three groups. The more advanced cloud solutions are usually used by large NGOs who operate internationally and have to keep in touch with their partners. Cloud services are also popular among smaller organizations, which find it to be the cheapest and most convenient option. New organizations are the third group who find the cloud to be a natural work environment.

Cloud adds to the democratization and decentralization process driven by Internet and new technologies. We expect that cloud solutions that serve both public and private needs will increasingly be offered via cloud in Poland, and we are beginning to educate our NGO sector on what is available in this area.

Nonprofits Live: Online Collaboration on October 25

evonne — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:14:00 GMT

Collaboration is a fruitful pursuit requiring patience, diligence, careful listening, and a willingness to try something new. Sometimes it takes us down roads we never intended - with great surprise endings!

We appreciate the extraordinary collaborators who have come together to make TechSoup resources, blogs and forums your destination for information on nonprofit technology. There are many challenges to working together including timing, technology glitches and communication breakdowns. Live, interactive events and collaborative sessions can be easy or hard, but they are rarely predictable! As we learned today, it is a good test of collaboration skill to try and rebound after a breakdown in connection - some environments are more conducive to working together and the number of factors out of our control grow quickly in virtual collaboration.

In our October 25, 2011 episode of Nonprofits Live we encountered a number of crash glitches that made this content inaccessible for most of our audience. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused as we work to provide and demonstrate stable collaboration solutions. The c ontent from this episode of Nonprofits Live can be commented on in our TechSoup forums where we encourage you to ask questions and continue the conversation on how to work better together and overcome the occasional glitches in connection.

The slides from this collaboration event with Pierre Khawand, Ken Homer, and Kristy Graves can be found below and each of these guests deserves a shoutout for their willingness to bear with us during technical challenges. Pierre shared insights from a YouTube video that is also embedded so you can see the lessons learned from these great speakers. After the video you will see some of the links from our TechSoup site and partners that will help you narrow your technology tool choices for future program planning. We hope this is a start to a longer conversation and we invite you to join us on the forums to ask more detailed questions on collaboration.

Nonprofits Live: Collaboration

View more presentations from TechSoup Global.

Ken Homer's Collaboration slides

View more presentations from TechSoup Global.

Get SAP Streamwork through TechSoup
Get Microsoft Office through TechSoup
Get ReadyTalk through TechSoup
Get Microsoft Lync Server through TechSoup
Get Wikispaces through TechSoup
Get Citrix Online products including GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar through TechSoup
Online Collaboration Reduces Travel
Collaboration Tools Chart | TechSoup for Libraries
Online Collaboration Tools | TechSoup Webinar
A Few Good Tools for Sharing Files with Distributed Groups
What file-sharing tools do you use?
Collaborate with Wikis | TechSoup Webinar

Original Blog Post:

Nonprofits Live: Online Collaboration

Tuesday, October 25

"What are the best ways to foster collaboration?" is a top question we hear at TechSoup from the organizations we serve. Many teams struggle with bringing the best and brightest together effectively to get more done.

Our Nonprofits Live interactive series is designed to address such questions and find solutions for the toughest organizational issues.

During the event, you will hear from our speakers and have a chance to ask them questions in the interactive chat with our guests Pierre Khawand, Ken Homer, and Kristy Graves.

Some of the areas we will cover include:

How to partner for a large campaign across multiple teams or offices
How to work together effectively
How to get in sync across international teams
How to create harmony around different cultural approaches to work
How to pick the best tools for your particular collaboration challenges

Speakers

Ken Homer is the founding partner of Collaborative Conversations - Include More Voices, Make Better Choices, a consultancy offering numerous approaches to bring people together in ways that are both productive and fulfilling. Collaborative Conversations have been convened in client companies such as Genentech, NASA, The National Park Service at Yosemite, UCSC, and The Center for Interfaith Relations.

Ken is currently working as the Worldview Literacy Project Manager at The Institute of Noetic Sciences. Prior to founding Collaborative Conversations, Ken received his certification in Integral Coaching^® through New Ventures West. A student of various dialogue approaches, he was an integral member of the team that developed the World Cafe dialogue process and was director of community outreach from 1997 to 2007 for The World Café Community Foundation. Ken serves on the Circle of Stewards for The Bay Area Society for Organizational Learning. Find Ken on Twitter at @ken_homer.

Pierre Khawand has more than twenty years of experience in the software industry. He has led several technology ventures and completed successful mergers and acquisitions. He foundedPeople OntheGo in 2001 to enable business professionals to communicate and collaborate more effectively using leading edge technologies. His best selling Accomplishing More in Less Time, Less Effort, and Less Stress workshop enables business professionals to better cope with information overload and competing priorities.

Pierre has published The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook,Accomplishing More With Google Apps, The Results Curve: How to Manage Focused and Collaborative Time!, The New New Inbox: How Email and Social Media Changed Our Lives, and previously The Smartphone Experiment Book-How to Select Your Smartphone in 5 Easy Steps. Pierre holds a Master's degree in engineering from the University of Michigan and has completed several executive education programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Management. Pierre Khawand can be contacted via e-mail at pierre@people-onthego.com or phone at415.503.1649. Find him on Twitter at @pierrekhawand and on as a guest bloggeron the TechSoup Blog.

Kristy Graves is a member of TechSoup's Online Community team working across the organization to oversee social media conversations. Currently, as project manager for the 2012 TechSoup Digital Storytelling Campaign (TSDigs), she is working with local and global partners to plan, produce, and promote the upcoming 2012 campaign and event. Kristy leads the curation of theNonprofit Social Media 101 Wiki and supports ongoing collaboration for the Community Team's online live events and various social media channels.

Prior to TechSoup, Kristy worked at Craigslist Foundation and continues to be involved in various outdoor, environmental, and social enterprise organizations. Find Kristy on Twitter at @kg.

We look forward to seeing your comments and questions live at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on the October 25th episode of Nonprofits Live.

How the Cloud Can Make a Difference for Disaster Relief

elliotharmon — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:16:00 GMT

During the month of October, join TechSoup.org and the TechSoup Global Network for our Cloud Computing Worldwide campaign. Check back throughout the month for blog posts, webinars, and dispatches from around the world on cloud computing for nonprofits, NGOs, and public libraries.

This post was written by Tierney Smith, community manager of TechSoup Canada. It originally appeared on the TechSoup Canada Blog.

Often when we talk about the cloud, we talk about the different services we can get in the cloud — for example Google Apps, Twitter, or Dropbox. But the cloud isn't just a place where we can get services; it's a place where we can build our own services. And there are all sorts of things you can do with those services, including helping out in disaster recovery.

Before the cloud, if you wanted to build a web application (a program that you get to through a browser — Facebook is a good example) you would get yourself a server which would run your application.

If talk about servers makes you want to run and hide, think of your server like a customer service representative. When people call in, your customer service rep has to answer the phone and deal with the person's question. Similarly, when people visit your application (e.g. check their news feed on Facebook), your server has to run around and make sure to get each person the right information, displayed in the right way. After all, you wouldn't be very happy if your news feed was suddenly blank or if it showed information from people who weren't your friends.

Fortunately, the server is better at running around and dealing with everyone's requests than your customer service rep is. But if your customer service rep gets enough calls, there's a point where they just can't answer everyone's calls anymore. At this point, you hire another customer service rep to help them out. Similarly, there's a point where so many people are visiting your application that your server just can't handle all the running around anymore and it crashes. This is when it's time to buy another server, so your two servers can work together and help each other handle the load.

So you're running along just fine, and then all of a sudden something happens that completely overwhelms your resources. Maybe you run a big promotion and all of a sudden your customer service reps are now getting 10 times the normal number of calls. What do you do? Do you run out and hire a boatload of new customer service reps? You could, but then when the promotion is over and call volumes return to normal, what are you going to do with them? They'll either sit around twiddling their thumbs or you'll have to let them go.

Same thing happens with your servers. If all of a sudden you get a ton of people accessing your application, you're going to need to run out and buy more servers, fast. But when it's all over you'll have a bunch of servers sitting around collecting dust. How do you avoid this in the first place? This is where the cloud comes to the rescue.

Hosting your application in the cloud — instead of on your own servers — is like having a customer service department that grows and shrinks automatically whenever you need it to. More people start calling in? Customer service reps magically appear to start taking calls. Call volume drops off? The extra reps leave and go do other stuff. All without you having to do anything. While there are some clear logistical problems in doing this with people, it works a lot better with computers (for starters, they don't need a salary, training, or job security). Applications in the cloud can be flexible in accommodating however many people visit your application without you having to worry about it. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying there aren't downsides to hosting in the cloud, I'm simply trying to illustrate this particular benefit).

One of the scenarios where it's especially important to be able to handle unusually high amounts of traffic is after a disaster, which is why Second Harvest Japan decided to host its Emergency Response Portal in the cloud. Through the portal they provided partners and supporters with updates on the situation, information about food distribution, a map of where they are working, photos of their work, and of course the ability to donate.

If Second Harvest Japan had set up its own server to run its Emergency Response Portal, it probably would have crashed pretty quickly — like the lone customer service rep that got too many calls to handle. On the other hand, buying a whole bunch of servers wouldn't have made sense — that would cost a lot of money, which should instead be spent on relief efforts. As well, once things had died down a bit, the organization would have found itself with a room full of servers it had no use for. So instead, they used a cloud service — in this case, Microsoft's Windows Azure platform — to host their portal. This allowed Second Harvest to run its portal smoothly without crashing, while putting most of its money and effort where it was needed — helping people on the ground.

Related

Cloud Is Not a Technology Decision

elliotharmon — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:57:00 GMT

Richard Cooper is the development manager at Charity Technology Trust, an organization that provides IT services to charities in the United Kingdom. CTT is a member of the TechSoup Global Network, providing donated hardware and software to charities in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

In this guest blog post, Richard argues that cloud computing is primarily a business decision, not a technology decision. This post originally appeared on Richard's blog.

I've sat through a lot of debates recently about whether not-for-profits should migrate to the cloud. Most have either focused on technology questions such as, "Is the cloud better technology than traditional models?" or cost arguments. But what struck me during these debates — apart from the ubiquitous use of "cloud" to cover anything that didn't involve capital expenditure on IT and therefore being a quite useless term for any specific discussion — was that there is a crucial point being missed: the general overhead for small organizations (as most not-for-profits are) of owning technology.

Benchmarking IT Costs (for the Cloud, Too)

This was really brought home by two conversations. One was a discussion on benchmarking of IT costs, and whether outsourcing was more expensive than doing it yourself. One of my colleagues made the point that for the outsourcer, all costs are visible and have to be taken into account when setting a price — commercial reality is very harsh if they're not covering all their costs.

Now, that's not to say that the in-house IT organization doesn't have to cover its costs, but some of those costs can get deeply hidden within the organization, and are not immediately visible and attributable in a chart of accounts. For instance, the cost of a finance or HR function may not get included, yet by their very existence, IT employees add some burden to these functions.

Removing the Burden of "Sanity Checks"

The second discussion was with a small charity who have engaged an IT support company to help them and wanted someone to "sanity check" what was being proposed to them. The manager at the charity didn't feel that he had sufficient understanding of the technical detail to know whether what he was being told was right and, in particular, whether some of the work could be deferred to manage their cash flow better. Which brings me to my point:

Cloud solutions such as Google, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, Huddle, Salesforce.com, and so on, take away a set of technology from the organization so that senior managers no longer have to concern themselves with it.

Now, I know this is a claim made by the outsourcing fraternity, but cloud is subtly different. I've been involved with a lot of outsourced contracts and they all finish up in discussions about how much kit you use, what technology is being managed, how often you want to change/upgrade it, and so on. So management are still involved in gory technology decisions. This is where cloud solutions differ. As a manager, I don't care about the detail of the underlying technology. I want email; I want filesharing; I want CRM functionality. What hardware, operating system, RAM, DRAM, SAN, UPS, NAS, SSD, IPV6, Ubuntu, Linux, Windows, SQL, MySQL, SAP, Oracle (and any other acronym you wish to come up with that I don't give a twopenny stuff about) do we need?

Decisions on Cloud Based on Business, Not Tech

Management time is in short supply in not-for-profits. Managers want to focus what time there is on their passion: what their organization delivers to its beneficiaries. Detailed IT decisions are the management overhead IT people forget about when they have their technology debates. Most non-IT managers don't care about this stuff. It just takes time and gets in the way. The cloud allows them not to care, and to focus on what matters, which is how can technology help my organization deliver more, faster, cheaper, or in completely new ways. And without worrying about how much memory we need in the server or where are we going to put the UPS.

Senior managers in not-for-profits are going to make decisions on cloud solutions on the basis that they save them time, are convenient, and they're not going to wear out in three years' time. Does it do the job? Is the price point right? Will it save the organization and/or me personally a lot of time? If the answers to these three questions are yes, yes, and yes, then expect senior managers in not-for-profits to say yes to the cloud. It's not a technology argument for them, it’s a business decision.

A View of the Cloud from Brazil

jimlynch — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:55:00 GMT

Brazil is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but the cost of broadband Internet is hobbling cloud adoption in the region. We discussed cloud adoption in Brazil's NGO sector with Valter Cegal of TechSoup Brasil.

Internet Access via Telecenter

TechSoup Brasil is a project of Associação Telecentro de Informação e Negócios (ATN). ATN is an NGO association of over 2,000 telecenters in Brazil. Its mission is to offer products and services that help telecenters become self-sustainable while providing low-cost public access to computers and the Internet. Valter is the chief operating officer of ATN. He is an electrical engineer, having worked for several years in management for large electronics companies like Philips Electronics and Advanced Micro Devices. He is also currently the country manager for the One Laptop per Child Project.

Because telecenters are one of the primary ways that many people in developing countries access the Internet, Valter has a unique vantage point to see how cloud computing is rolling out in Brazil. Brazil is the eighth largest economy in the world. It's the largest country in South America and it has the fastest growing economy in the region. It is one of the rapidly emerging "BRIC" economies, along with Russia, India, and China.

Broadband Affordability Limits Cloud Access

According to a recent UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report on Internet availability in 152 countries, Brazil ranked 64th in overall Internet availability to its people. But ranked 96th in Internet affordability, especially for fixed broadband Internet and mobile phone Internet. Needless to say, the expense of Internet affects cloud adoption. Valter reports that pricing for broadband Internet for NGOs is at least five times more expensive for equivalent service in the U.S. He also points out that per capita income in the U.S. is four times higher than in Brazil. As a result, he finds that people in NGOs in the region are beginning to use cloud computing services like Google Docs and Hotmail, but are often not aware that those applications they are using are in the cloud, or what exactly cloud computing is.

Valter has found that the cloud applications that seem to be most popular in Brazil are the email applications, Hotmail, and Gmail. Google Docs, Google Groups, and Google Maps are also very well-known and widely used. He also finds that people in NGOs are not using smartphones to access the Internet more than they use computers because phone-based Internet is about one-third more expensive than fixed Internet for use on PCs.

He reports that broadband Internet availability and affordability is still a major obstacle for many NGOs in Brazil, not only because of the relatively high cost, but also because local Internet infrastructure is not in place. It is not easily available in smaller towns and rural areas.

Getting Broadband to NGOs

Finally, Valter does think that cloud adoption in Brazil will grow over the next two or three years, but primarily among individuals. Under current conditions, adoption of the cloud among offices and NGOs will happen more slowly because of the continuing high prices for institutional broadband. He is hopeful, however, for a much-improved situation:

The Brazilian government is quite aware of the importance of having an efficient and good quality infrastructure, and there is currently a national plan sponsored by the Ministry of Communications to discuss a way to reduce prices and improve the quality of the broadband services available in Brazil. The plan is called Plano Nacional de Banda Larga (PNBL) and one of the possibilities being discussed is for the Brazilian government to use Telebras, a state owned company, to become a provider of broadband services. That situation reflects the concern of the Brazilian government vis-a-vis broadband services.