During B Corp month, the B Corporation community pulled together to promote the B Corp movement and share our business practices which represent our environmental and social initiatives.

We believe being a B Corporation impacts not only the environment but also has a positive influence our employees and client base.

We’ve put together this short clip to visit some of the questions which have been circulating during B Corp month and to talk about our company efforts which are core to our philosophy.

New to B Corp? take a read about the movement on the B Corporation website.

The organizers of B Corp month have also curated some great footage of various B Corporations speaking about their outlooks and practices, check it out at the B Corp month website!

According to a recent report, Australian enterprises are rapidly shifting their attention to cloud computing and utilizing the platform for their IT needs, which is causing other Asia Pacific countries to follow suit.

State of Cloud Computing in Australia: 2011, was recently released by business research and consulting company Frost and Sullivan. The report states that almost half (43 percent) of Australian enterprises have adopted a variation of cloud computing, whilst 41 percent of IT ‘decision makers’ have confirmed that cloud computing will take precedence.

A reduction in capital and operational expenditure, cost savings, increased business scalability and the potential to deliver on demand IT resources are cited as the main attractions of the cloud.

Frost and Sullivan ICT research director Arun Chandrasekaran acknowledges that, “there has been a significant increase in the use of cloud services in Australia in the past 12 months, and all the indications are that this will continue”.

The cloud alternative is a concept being heavily examined by Australian businesses, with Chandrasekaran “expect[ing] to see a number of trial deployments this year as companies dip their toes in the water and test non-mission critical applications and infrastructure”.

As we have previously discussed the private, public and hybrid clouds were identified in the report as distinct cloud models, with the hybrid cloud found to be the most popular in Australia. The hybrid option has been implemented by 22 percent of Australian enterprises; in comparison, only 18 percent are using the public cloud. Frost and Sullivan attribute this trend to the flexible approach to costing, service level agreements and security offered in the hybrid cloud.

The most favourable cloud alternative were found to be software-as-a-service, with 70 percent of businesses renting software through the cloud. In stark contrast, platform-as-a-service is yet to fully take off.

Infrastructure-as-a-service has experienced a rapid expansion in the past year, with 50 percent of cloud users accessing resources via this type of on-demand computing and storage cloud.

Research also indicates that investments in the cloud are set to rise, or at the very least be sustained throughout the current fiscal year. Risk management and analysis will be the basis of many cautious approaches enlisted by enterprises as they evaluate whether to make the move to the cloud. Whilst server virtualisation and network security will motivate private cloud spending.