Capitalizing on Microsoft Technology: Mortgageflex Systems, Jacksonville, Florida, Is One of a Handful of Mortgage Technology Companies That have Won Special Recognition As Microsoft Gold Certified Partners (Technology‪)‬

When Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft[R] Corporation back in 1975, it's not likely they could have envisioned the business monument the company would be today--33 years later. * Controlling 80 percent of the entire personal computer (PC) software industry, offering hundreds of products to the market and called home by more than 91,000 employees worldwide, Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world. Its impact can be felt around the globe in nearly every sector that relies upon computing products and services. * The mortgage market is no exception, although beyond the basic business services supported by Microsoft products, the company's presence has been somewhat more limited than in other industries. Technology in our industry previously tended to take the form of in-house systems--either homegrown or deeply customized--that would cloak an individual firm's proprietary practices. * Such a restrictive model may have worked when mortgage revenue was measured in trillions of dollars, when operating practices were largely obscure and when loan applications flowed in almost faster than they could be processed. But today the landscape has changed; government lending is a growth area, profits are slim, uncertainty permeates the industry and speculative research and development (R&D) is as popular as a stated-income, pay-option adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM). As a result, everyone is looking for the most value for his or her dollar. Those are just the right conditions for a platform like the .NET[TM] technology offered by Microsoft. This .NET technology and component-based scalable logical architecture (CSLA) offer lenders a multitude of advantages they've never had before, because CSLA--a software framework--is designed to provide a standardized way to create objects and business entities using business objects.