Today Microsoft Philanthropies, the recently-announced expansion of our commitment to global giving, is making a big statement. We will donate $1 billion in cloud computing resources over the next 3 years to 70,000 non-profits and NGOs worldwide. I invite you to read details of the news in
Brad Smith’s blog post published today.
So why is this important, and why now?
In the January 20 issue of The Financial Times
I write about the challenges and the opportunities that make this effort necessary. (Note: Subscription required to access link.) In that op-ed piece, I pose a question: How can we make it easier for governments and NGOs to use the public cloud for public good?
The “public cloud” refers to massive, privacy-protected data and storage services rendered over a network for public use. Cloud computing makes it possible to reason over quantities of data to produce specific insights and intelligence. It converts guesswork and speculation into predictive and analytical power.
