ExtraCare Charitable Trust will put its IT services on a cloud-based platform which will support its planned expansion programme.

The charity, which provides housing and home care services for older people, has signed a contract worth £1.4m with Advanced 365 to manage its core IT infrastructure for the next five years.

Rowland Sandys, head of IT said: “Our current IT services and network are restrictive and no longer aligned to the organisation’s current demands.”

The solution will, “provide us with a single, flexible and scalable IT infrastructure to support our future growth strategy whilst providing enhanced service and security levels,” he added.

In the next five years ExtraCare plans to expand its retirement village development programme with three villages planned to open before the end of 2013. It also plans to expand its enriched opportunities programme and wellbeing services.

Advanced will provide the charity with service desk support, a managed Citrix desktop, managed Microsoft Exchange 2010 email through Microsoft Office 365, systems monitoring, storage and backup as well as ensuring 99.5 per cent service availability and timely incident management within business hours.

The cloud service will be available to ExtraCare’s 30 sites by the end of this year.