 equip- ment supplied by more than one manufacturer. However, in economic downturns, organizations are often reluctant to invest in this type of software. New applications critical to operating an organization's core operations have a priority in resource allocation. A Nonprofit's Experiences with the Cloud A non-profit organization that works with developing countries has offices in the United States and remote sites around the world. The company's vision is to move as many applications as possible to either hosted sites or cloud providers. With hosting, the customer's own servers are located at the host sites. Several applications including budgeting and payroll have already been outsourced to cloud or hosting sites. The company is now moving its accounting packages to a hosting facility. These packages will be located on the nonprofit's own server at a hosting site. A software developer will manage the applications. The nonprofit still has in-house applications, including e-mail, and IP phone and voicemail systems. It hasn't moved the phone system and voicemail because it owns the hardware on which these systems reside and has multiyear commitments for the software licenses. When the organization first moved its budget application to the cloud, there were many snags. Users had problems logging in, they couldn't see department charge codes, and some managers couldn't charge items to their own departments. The application still does not work satisfactorily. Continued Data Centers and IP Private Branch Exchanges A major problem is that not all of these remote applications are compatible with their current browser. The non-profit would like to see more standardization in this area. When it moves applications off-site, it moves the database associated with each, as well. Management feels that this creates a simpler configuration than moving just the application. The IT director feels that the cloud works well for testing and developing new applications, but that it needs to improve. He has heard that many other non