We are building similar systems for communities of interest. Our approach is to allow small businesses, departments or individiuals to set up an entry level system and participate in a larger system. Each entity has its own network and can hand individual items over to the group network.
Groups can also share information.
Its a powerful and simple idea and avoids most of the angst of having your data and applications residing centrally because all that is shared is the index. Diskeeper Get Max System Performance.