CBS Worldwide Announces Communicator.NET, Fully Employs Windows.NET Platform; Technology Migration Results in Five-Fold Performance Improvement.

Business Editors

LAKE MARY, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2003

Fiserv CBS Worldwide announced today the availability of Communicator.NET, its service-oriented architectural strategy for the next generation of its products. The XML-based Communicator provides a common middleware, which allows for the integration of various financial services systems. CBS Worldwide recently migrated Communicator to the Microsoft .NET framework.

According to Mark Hill, system architect for CBS Worldwide, the new .NET framework-connected application is providing a five-fold improvement in performance and was tested for linear scalability for up to 500 documents per second.

"These improvements are making the solution more attractive to large financial institutions. The move to the .NET framework has resulted in a more than 40 percent reduction in code as a result," Hill said. The Communicator application is already running in several CBS Worldwide clients.

Communicator is an XML-based software solution that provides a common interface to integrate dissimilar financial services systems, such as core banking, Internet banking, credit bureau information, credit card processing, call center automation and more. The result is an interwoven solution that seamlessly shares information. Communicator's components reside on a server and provide communication between front-end (client) applications and back-end systems, either of which may be local or remote.

Greg Green, executive vice president of CBS Worldwide, said the introduction of .NET technology into this solution has made CBS Worldwide offerings even more appealing.

"A service-oriented architecture, where an organization's existing systems can work together in harmony, has long been the direction of the financial services industry. Now, with performance enhancements made available by Windows(R).NET technology, the dream can become a reality. We have already seen a number of our largest customers benefit by implementing Communicator, allowing them to integrate their platform services and branches, while providing new services, such as online account acquisition and others. The inclusion of this exciting new technology will only multiply the benefit for them," Green said.

CBS Worldwide is a unit of Fiserv, Inc. and is a leading financial information systems provider serving the global marketplace. More than 200 commercial banks, private banks, finance houses, building societies, credit unions, thrifts, and diversified financial companies use Fiserv CBS technology. Fiserv CBS Worldwide is on the Internet at www.cbs.fiserv.com.

Fiserv, Inc. (Nasdaq: FISV) is an independent, full-service provider of integrated data processing and information management systems to the financial industry. As a leading technology resource, Fiserv serves more than 13,000 financial service providers worldwide, including banks, broker-dealers, credit unions, financial planners/investment advisers, insurance companies and agents, mortgage banks and savings institutions. Headquartered in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Fiserv also can be found on the Internet at www.fiserv.com.