The Rundown

• Open Solutions' debt burden leads to eventual sale.
• DNA platform to replace Acumen.
• Fiserv CEO says other platforms remain supported.

While Fiserv Inc.'s purchase of Open Solutions Inc. marked the end of an era, it also sparked conversation about how the financial services technology giant will handle the addition of another handful of core account processing platforms to its portfolio.

The Jan. 14 purchase, for $55 million in cash and another $960 million in assumed debt, marks the end of a feisty Fiserv competitor that at one time threatened its domination of the credit union technology space.

Open Solutions–founded in 1992 in rented space in a Connecticut shopping center–made headlines and money while Louis Hernandez Jr., its aggressive CEO, engineered acquisitions and billion-dollar credit union signings to its new relational database platform, which went through various iterations and names before ending up as CUnify for smaller credit unions and its flagship DNA platform for larger credit unions.