BATON ROUGE, La. -- Steve Schexnayder has been through a lot of changes in his 23 years with his credit union, especially when it comes to integrating operating systems with the ever-growing list of third-party offerings that have become crucial to the business life 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 to make the move to a client-server open architecture system in 1997, beginning the process of integrating several different operating systems each running a vital piece of the CU's business, including a UNIX-based network running on a mainframe.

And he understands what his fellow IntegraSys clients might be thinking as many of them make the move onto Microsoft-based SQL databases and .Net integration technologies at the behest of their core processor.

IntegraSys is well in the process of moving its client base of several hundred credit unions onto Microsoft-based technologies embedded in the Fiserv unit's suite of four core processing platforms.

"My guess is that it's probably a lot easier today than when we first converted to Microsoft-based systems," Schexnayder says. "Back then, we were much more in a mainframe environment and not everyone was so sure about the client-server setup. But we were running a lot of different operating systems and it was really hard to integrate and move information between systems. It looked like a neat product so we decided to go ahead and give it a try. Unisys also was coming out with a Windows-type server system and we had to decide which way to go.

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

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

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

"It's worth mentioning what these don't replace," says David Turner, CIO at IntegraSys. "When you're building an application around a .NET framework, it really does allow you to keep applications you're not ready to replace yet, no matter what language they're coded in."

Turner notes that .NET means different things to different people. "I guess it's a matter of perspective. Some would call it a messaging framework for interfaces, others might call it a programming language or development system," he says. "To us, it's not really a product per se as much as it's a set of tools that allows developers to easily create and integrate products that interface well with other systems."

Issues of scalability and vulnerability have been addressed by Microsoft and its customers, such as IntegraSys, which decided long ago to stick with the software giant's VisualBasic programming tools 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 and support their products and so would we, so it's been good for vendors like us to build our own products on technologies that are so widely used," Turner says.

The Fiserv unit is now more than halfway through migrating its client 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 all NET-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 the service bureau Premier platform have moved to .NET on the front end and that work has now gotten under way on migrating the small credit unions running the Charlotte core processing system, also as a service bureau.

The CUBE system was built in the SQL database, while other conversions involve replacing DB2, Oracle and other competitor databases when the opportunity arises, such as the replacement of a desktop system.

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

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

[email protected]