A Maryland CUSO has partnered with a hosted applications specialist in California to offer a new suite of production IT offerings for credit unions.

Ongoing Operations of Hagerstown is working with Cloudworks of Thousand Oaks to provide the new hosted IT enterprise services. Several CUSOs and credit unions are in the implementation stage, the disaster recovery and business continuity specialist said.

Initially offered will be hosted Microsoft Exchange server and virtual desktop products which will allow credit unions to reduce total ownership costs, including costly upgrades to Exchange 2010, and pay predictable monthly service fees instead of large capital expenditures, Ongoing Operations said.

"Credit unions' overall IT expenses continue to grow and resources are often stretched thin trying to keep up with frequent hardware upgrades, patches and increasingly complex software licensing fees," said CUSO President Kirk Drake, whose company now serves about 100 credit unions.

Mike Eaton, Cloudworks' CEO, said his firm has been serving small and medium-sized businesses for 14 years.

"By combining our expertise in client migrations and highly customizable interfaces with Ongoing Operations' secure data centers built specifically for credit union requirements, we have developed a truly unique solution with significant benefits for the industry," he said.