BATON ROUGE, La. -- Steve Schexnayder has been through a lot ofchanges in his 23 years with his credit union, especially when itcomes to integrating operating systems with the ever-growing listof third-party offerings that have become crucial to the businesslife of any CU that expects to thrive.

Now the vice president of IT at Neighbors Federal Credit Union,Schex-

nayder was there when his credit union was one of the first tomake the move to a client-server open architecture system in 1997,beginning the process of integrating several different operatingsystems each running a vital piece of the CU's business, includinga UNIX-based network running on a mainframe.

And he understands what his fellow IntegraSys clients might bethinking as many of them make the move onto Microsoft-based SQLdatabases and .Net integration technologies at the behest of theircore processor.

IntegraSys is well in the process of moving its client base ofseveral hundred credit unions onto Microsoft-based technologiesembedded in the Fiserv unit's suite of four core processingplatforms.

"My guess is that it's probably a lot easier today than when wefirst converted to Microsoft-based systems," Schexnayder says."Back then, we were much more in a mainframe environment and noteveryone was so sure about the client-server setup. But we wererunning a lot of different operating systems and it was really hardto integrate and move information between systems. It looked like aneat product so we decided to go ahead and give it a try. Unisysalso was coming out with a Windows-type server system and we had todecide which way to go.

"In the long run, it's paid off for us. We're in a lot of ASPrelationships now and just being able to access data from that SQLdatabase so easily has helped us manage our credit union a lotbetter and really get information to different departments a lotquicker," says Schexnayder, who heads up a six-person IT staffresponsible for 180 to 200 end users in seven different locationsfor the $328 million CU.

That information is passing between the credit union's CUBE coresystem and third-party solutions that includes RADDON's cross selland MCIF solutions, an APPRO loan-decisioning system and mostrecently, account opening on the Andera system.

The tech gurus at Texas-based IntegraSys say that being able toeasily add third-party solutions is one advantage of going to theubiquitous Microsoft SQL and .NET technologies, but there's alsothe ability to hang on to pieces of the past.

"It's worth mentioning what these don't replace," says DavidTurner, CIO at IntegraSys. "When you're building an applicationaround a .NET framework, it really does allow you to keepapplications you're not ready to replace yet, no matter whatlanguage they're coded in."

Turner notes that .NET means different things to differentpeople. "I guess it's a matter of perspective. Some would call it amessaging framework for interfaces, others might call it aprogramming language or development system," he says. "To us, it'snot really a product per se as much as it's a set of tools thatallows developers to easily create and integrate products thatinterface well with other systems."

Issues of scalability and vulnerability have been addressed byMicrosoft and its customers, such as IntegraSys, which decided longago to stick with the software giant's VisualBasic programmingtools when there were a lot more options out there than today.

"There were others who were ahead of Microsoft in that regard,but we figured they'd be around in the future to enhance andsupport their products and so would we, so it's been good forvendors like us to build our own products on technologies that areso widely used," Turner says.

The Fiserv unit is now more than halfway through migrating itsclient base onto the Microsoft-based platforms, says Anne Stauch,IntegraSys senior vice president and general manager.

The entire CUBICS Plus client base of 220 credit unions is allNET-based, she says, while the 70 or so credit unions running CUBE"are currently finishing development and are largely on .NET,"Stauch says.

She says most of the approximately 400 credit unions on theservice bureau Premier platform have moved to .NET on the front endand that work has now gotten under way on migrating the smallcredit unions running the Charlotte core processing system, also asa service bureau.

The CUBE system was built in the SQL database, while otherconversions involve replacing DB2, Oracle and other competitordatabases when the opportunity arises, such as the replacement of adesktop system.

Conversions also are occurring within core platforms atIntegraSys. For instance, Neighbors FCU is moving from a Probefront end to an Encore front end that uses .NET technology, aprocess that Schexnayder says has not been too daunting.

"Our core processor guides us on these things," he says, "Butone thing about running on the Microsoft line is that you get sofamiliar with it over the years, and it's easier to find people tomanage it, too, when you have to hire new folks."

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