Cloud computing has been around – and you've likely been using it – for years. At a basic level, if you use a Gmail, Yahoo, or even (dare I say) AOL webmail account, you've been in the Cloud.

But it's one thing to use the Cloud, quite another to understand what it is – and how its myriad of applications can benefit your organization.

Our webinar series, “Nonprofits & Cloud Computing: A Guide to Navigating the Nonprofit Cloud", will dive into the benefits and the potential pitfalls of cloud computing. Thanks to the generous support of Google, we're able to offer it to you for free.

> Space is limited. Learn more and RSVP for free!

Flickr Photo: kohtzyLast weekend, I was lucky enough to speak at The Arc of the USA's executive leadership conference. As usual, I did a session on social media, but they also let me trot out something new: Five Trends that Will Impact IT.

The presentation includes lots of tech stuff, of course. But one of the main points I wanted to drive home to this group of really smart and engaged leaders was the idea that tech trends aren't really just about tech: They reflect the changing world around us as much as they reflect the latest innovations.

I tried to frame most of the trends in terms of the business changes that are happening and the possibilities and challenges they create for IT.

Here are the trends:

Flickr Photo: Tech Writer BoyHere at NTEN World Headquarters, we simply could not live without Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). We have staff members in three time zones -- and no IT department -- but the Cloud gives us (nearly) maintenance-free infrastructure and real-time collaboration that wouldn't be reasonably possible otherwise.

I've been talking about the cloud a lot lately as I roam the country, forcing audiences to pay attention to me. Since I love the cloud so much, I sort of assumed you all would be behind it, too. To your credit, most of you are. But there is a stronghold out there that is, shall we say, a wee bit skeptical. I'd like to respond to that with a healthy "Get Over It!", but I actually understand where the skeptics are coming from.

Enter Gartner. In another of their always insightful webinars, we got to take a look at where the cloud is now, and where it's headed. I live tweeted a bunch about this, but here are my notes in a reasonable approximation of order:

Every Wednesday, Gartner does a free webinar on a variety of topics. This week, they presented "Technology Trends You Can't Afford to Ignore." I tweeted my way through the one hour call, but here are some notes with a little more clarity and reflection.

Flickr Photo: akakumoYesterday, I had the privilege of sharing the stage at an event on cloud computing hosted by the Salesforce.com/Foundation, Facebook, and Google. My job was to set the stage for the day and talk about why cloud computing is important for our sector. (If you want the slides, I put them up on slideshare, so free to download them.)

Though I think the cloud presents its own set of challenges for our sector, I also think it presents us with some amazing opportunities -- not just to save money on infrastructure and IT support, but to go about our work differently than we have before.  

I'll confess that I owe the genesis of my thinking around this to Steve Wright at the Saleforce.com/Foundation. I had the chance to interview him about his upcoming NTC session, and that set me to thinking about just what we COULD do with the cloud if we were able to look beyond the bottom line. 

What that is, I think, is collaboration and evaluation, facilitated by free-moving data.

You've noticed this, I'm sure. In the last decade, the pile of data we have to sift through to make decisions has grown from a molehill into a mountain. As communication and interaction have moved from analog to digital, we're able to capture more information than anyone thought possible. 

Think about it. If you ran a phone bank in the early 90's, the only way you had to guage whether or not your message was effective was to count the number of hang-ups. Now we send out an email and not only know whether or not folks took action for us, but which part of the message compelled them to click, and which parts of our list found the message most compelling. And we can know dozens of other things as our databases record those clicks. (This example is inspired by The Numerati. Buy it.)

Making sense of all this data is going to be our key challenge as a sector as we move forward. But the cloud is going to help us in this regard, because the cloud makes it exponentially easier for us to move data around. 

In the cloud, we can share client service data with other organizations and map it against the need demonstrated by census data. In the cloud, we can create visualizations of our data that make those multi-colored spreadsheets finally make REAL sense. In the cloud, we'll be able to record even more of the ways our constituents interact with us, and interpret what that means. 

That's the promise of the cloud. Now all we have to do is live up to it. 

Also - I have to mention that there were some great panelists with some really cool insights to share at this event.  Some of my favorite tidbits came from Scott Beale, Jake Brewer and Judi Sohn.  They all had great real-life examples of the challenges and joys of the cloud. 

My favorite advice of the day came from Judi who was addressing how difficult it is to get end users to switch to the cloud when they are used to, say, Outlook.  Judi's really smart advice?  Smart by moving the data to the applications they already use.  Pop your gmail to Outlook.  And, as users have questions or needs, point them to the cloud for answers.  Eventually, they will give up their software for the cloud.  

Steve Wright's PantsSteve Wright is a busy man. I know this from watching his tweets. He's the Director of Innovation at the Salesforce.com/Foundation, and when he's not listening to terrible/cult classic music, unearthing incredible scientific discoveries, or updating us on the status of his pants, he's thinking VERY BIG THOUGHTS.

One of those big thoughts? The fact that more of us are doing our computing in the cloud means a lot more than infrastructure and energy savings for our organizations. It means we have the opportunity to collaborate like never before. As the web opens up, the difficulties in sharing data are dissolving.

In his session at the 2009 NTC, "Cloud Computing: More than just IT Plumbing in the Sky", Steve and his amazing panel of guests will talk about the implications of cloud computing as a means for learning more about our work, collaborating better, and creating more change. Take a listen: