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

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

Open Solutions–founded in 1992 in rented space in a Connecticutshopping center–made headlines and money while Louis Hernandez Jr.,its aggressive CEO, engineered  acquisitions andbillion-dollar credit union signings to its new relational databaseplatform, which went through various iterations and names beforeending up as CUnify for smaller credit unions and its flagship DNAplatform for larger credit unions.