Sharing IT Resources and Risk

Other imaginative groups created IT cooperatives to share pricey systems. A few of those IT co-ops continue to thrive today, offering the latest technologies for their members, from software as a service to open source. At the same time, they share the risk among all members, who are users and owners rolled into one.

That combined user/owner role makes running an IT co-op somewhat unique. Lake St. Louis, Mo.-based (NISC) has delivered IT services to rural utility and telecom cooperatives since 1963. CEO Vern Dosch says while most companies seek to increase shareholder value, IT co-ops "focus on products and services, because for our members, that's the ROI."

Naturally, co-op members don't have identical business needs, so their perceptions of value will differ. in Everett, Wash., has served 280 of the 295 school districts in the state since it was founded in 1967. Director Sue Furth says data collected by the co-op might mean one thing to district superintendents analyzing curricula and another to state legislators planning budgets.

Job function differences aren't the only tension built into the IT co-op model. There are also vast discrepancies in size within a co-op's membership. WSIPC, for example, has to deliver relevant IT services to districts as large as 30,000 students and as small as 75. NISC supplies software and services to more than 510 members, including a Georgia utility with about 150,000 meters and one in Montana with about 900.