Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions (CCS), a unit of Fiserv Inc. (Nasdaq: FISV) announced the availability of the IntelligEnt Sales Force application.  The IntelligEnt Sales Force application provides a unique sales tool to the financial services market through its ability to access core transaction systems, provide industry-specific business processes and integrate to back-end data warehousing, accounting and fulfillment systems.   

The IntelligEnt Sales Force application was successfully launched at LSB The Bank and is widely used across their branch retail network and commercial and small business departments. LSB The Bank used IntelligEnt Sales Force as the catalyst to drive a new sales culture throughout their organization.  Using IntelligEnt Sales Force, LSB has been able to identify and route referrals, track opportunities between business line silos and customize their officers’ sales desktops to better manage complex sales across the organization.

 “We chose IntelligEnt Sales Force to improve our sales effectiveness and synergies across the bank,” said Richard Balentine, Director of Technology and Operations at LSB The Bank. “Our most recent success was improving efficiencies and increasing sales production of an extensive cash management program.”

 “IntelligEnt Sales Force is uniquely designed with core integration for the financial institution industry to support sales within commercial or retail networks and does a great job of integrating with back-end systems,” said Regis Rapp, Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions president. “We built this application because we found that mid-tier banks were struggling to automate their sales activities particularly in the area of how the retail and commercial groups interact. The robust business process management tool helps to drive relationship-driven sales opportunities within organizations to produce greater returns from their sales efforts. This allows the sales staff to efficiently enhance forecasting; manage referrals, contacts and leads; analyze pipeline opportunities and interact with other departments across the enterprise.” Rapp adds, “Another key advantage is IntelligEnt's integration with InformEnt, our award-winning data warehousing solution, to deliver enterprise-wide business intelligence to maximize your sales efforts by deepening your understanding of your customers and prospects. ”

About LSB The Bank

LSB Bancshares Inc. (Nasdaq:LSBK) parent company of LSB The Bank has built a solid business in central North Carolina over the last 57 years.  LSB The Bank is a growing community bank that places emphasis on strong community involvement. Established in 1949, LSB The Bank provides banking services from 25 offices in Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford, Randolph and Stokes counties with a mortgage production office in Wake County.  Additional information is available at www.lsbnc.com.

Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions (CCS), a unit of Fiserv Inc., provides solutions that enable financial institutions and service providers to drive profit by effectively leveraging information technology. CCS specializes in delivering analytics, business intelligence, business process management and sales and service solutions to banks, credit unions, mortgage service providers and specialty finance companies.   Please visit Fiserv CCS at www.ccs.fiserv.com.

About Fiserv Inc.

Fiserv Inc. (Nasdaq: FISV), a Fortune 500 company, provides information management systems and services to the financial and health benefits industries. Leading services include transaction processing, outsourcing, business process outsourcing (BPO), software and systems solutions. The company serves more than 17,000 clients worldwide and is the leading provider of core processing solutions for U.S. banks, credit unions and thrifts. Fiserv was ranked the largest provider of information technology services to the financial services industry worldwide in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 FinTech 100 surveys. Fiserv Health provides health plan management, pharmacy benefits management and BPO services to the managed care market and self-funded commercial and government employers and health plans. Headquartered in Brookfield, Wis., Fiserv reported more than $4 billion in total revenue for 2005. For more information, please visit www.fiserv.com.

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Cited for its role as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Brainpower N.V. in sale to Bloomberg L.P.

Marlin & Associates New York LLC (“Marlin”) was recognized by The M&A Advisor for leading the “Financial Technology Deal of the Year.”  Marlin also was nominated (and was a finalist) for awards in three different categories.  

The M&A Advisor a monthly newsletter that focuses on timely issues, trends and strategies for buyers and sellers of middle market companies, cited Marlin & Associates’ role as the exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Brainpower N.V., one of Europe’s leading providers of decision-support solutions for investment-management professionals.  The award was based on the importance of the transaction, unique deal characteristics, transaction difficulty, and overall impact on the industry.

Brainpower is publicly listed on the Deutsche Bourse (Prime Standard) (BPW), registered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and  operates offices in Lugano, Switzerland and Milan, Italy. The Company provides over 100 of Europe’s leading investment management firms with an unusual level of insight into their portfolios and securities holdings.

On April 9, 2006, Brainpower entered into an agreement to be acquired by Bloomberg L. P., one of the world’s leading global providers of data, news and analytics. The tender was completed on June 5, 2006. Bloomberg prefers to build applications and products internally. In this case, Bloomberg came to recognize the unique power of Brainpower's analytical products, as well as its highly talented technical staff.

This award follows a period of intensive activity at Marlin & Associates, including two other recent transactions that received special recognition by The M&A Advisor.

“Our firm enjoys long-term relationship with many of the world’s most creative and forward-thinking financial, legal, and marketing technology and content businesses,” said Ken Marlin, founder and Managing Partner of Marlin & Associates. “We are honored that The M&A Advisor chose to recognize Marlin & Associates’ role as the Financial Technology Deal of the Year, out of so many other highly qualified nominees.”

About Marlin & Associates

Founded in 2002, Marlin & Associates is a boutique investment banking and strategic consulting firm focused on providing highly strategic and specialized, transaction-related services to U.S. and international middle-market firms engaged in technology, information, on-line media and business-services. The firm is based in New York City with a Washington, DC office.

Marlin & Associates' professionals have advised on over 200 successfully completed transactions in the technology and information services sector. Recently, M&A announced that it has more than doubled its technology sector M&A business.

In addition to Brainpower, Marlin & Associates was the exclusive advisor to numerous technology-related firms that recently made strategic moves, including:

·        Hugin ASA of Oslo Norway, which Marlin & Associates advised on its recently announced agreement to be acquired by Euronext N.V. (Amsterdam: NXTA; Paris: ENX) the pan-European exchange.

·        Triple Point Technology of Westport Connecticut, which Marlin & Associates advised on the sale of a majority interest to ABRY Partners, one of the most experienced and successful private equity firms in North America.

·        Cameron Systems (Vic) of Sydney, Australia, which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to Orc Software of Stockholm, Sweden (STKM: ORC).

·        Derivative Solutions, of Chicago, which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to FactSet Research Systems (NYSE: FDS).

·        Beauchamp Financial Technology Ltd. of London, England, which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to Linedata Services of Paris, France (PARIS: LIN).

·        Global Securities Information, of Washington D.C., which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to the Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC).

·        Interactive Technologies, Inc. of Summit, NJ, which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV).

·        europrospectus.com, of East Sussex, UK, which Marlin & Associates advised on its sale to FactSet Research Systems (NYSE: FDS).

For further information visit: www.marlinandassociates.com

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Corillian Intelligent Authentication to Provide Customer-Friendly Security for Online Banking Customers

Corillian Corp. (NASDAQ: CORI), the top provider of online banking, payment and security solutions to the financial services industry, announced that Synovus, a $31 billion diversified financial services company headquartered in Columbus, Ga., has selected Corillian Intelligent Authentication™ to provide enhanced security protection to Synovus’ online banking service.

Corillian Intelligent Authentication will integrate with Synovus’ new online banking system, powered by Corillian Consumer Banking. The combination of Corillian Consumer Banking and Corillian Intelligent Authentication will enable Synovus to continue delivering a great online experience to its customers while providing additional layers of authentication to protect customers’ accounts and assets from online fraudulent access. Corillian Intelligent Authentication validates the identities of online customers by asking personally relevant challenge questions beyond a user name and password.

"Protecting our customers from the ever-changing threats of online fraud is a top priority for Synovus," said Steven Jones, Synovus Director of Information Security. "With Corillian Intelligent Authentication we will incorporate a solution that will add additional layers of security protection while maintaining a seamless user experience that our customers expect in the online channel. We selected Corillian Intelligent Authentication for its multi-layered approach to authentication and for Corillian’s strong expertise and reputation in providing secure online banking services. This solution will provide our customers with a stronger sense of confidence in our online banking services."

Corillian Intelligent Authentication is a customer-friendly and highly successful security measure that interprets the information transmitted from the customer’s computer to the bank’s Web site, looking for a pattern of online banking behavior. This is accomplished by tracking patterns of online banking behavior and various non-personal attributes of online banking customers to determine when it is necessary to block or challenge suspicious visitors. Corillian Intelligent Authentication provides the platform for performing this behavioral risk analysis and challenges customers when their behavior falls outside of their typical patterns in order to prevent unauthorized activity. To date, more than 40 leading financial institutions have selected Corillian Intelligent Authentication for a strong, multi-layered authentication solution.

"We are excited to expand our online banking partnership with Synovus to enhance the security of their online channel," said Greg Hughes, chief security executive of Corillian. "Corillian Intelligent Authentication will create a multi-layered, strong authentication solution that will help Synovus provide non-intrusive security measures that can proactively prevent online fraud from happening and increase the confidence of their customer base."

About Synovus
Synovus (NYSE: SNV) is a diversified financial services holding company with more than $31 billion in assets based in Columbus, GA. Synovus provides integrated financial services including banking, financial management, insurance, mortgage and leasing services through 40 banks and other Synovus offices in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee; and electronic payment processing through an 81-percent stake in TSYS (NYSE: TSS), one of the world’s largest companies for outsourced payment services. FORTUNE magazine has named Synovus one of "The 100 Best Companies to Work For" in America, and has recognized Synovus in its Hall of Fame for consecutive appearances on the list since its inception in 1998. In 2005, Synovus also appeared on "America’s Most Admired Companies" list. See Synovus on the web at www.synovus.com.

About Corillian Corporation
Corillian is the market leader of online banking, payment and security solutions to the financial services industry. With 30 of the top 100 U.S. banks and 21 of the top 100 U.S. credit unions as customers, Corillian serves over 35 million online banking end users. Corillian provides the most flexible, scalable and secure set of online banking applications across multiple lines of business, integrating best-practice functionality developed for some of the most innovative financial institutions in the world. Corillian features integrated applications across Consumer Banking, Small Business Banking, Business and Consumer Payments, Wealth Management, Credit Card Management, and Corporate Cash Management, as well as enterprise wide solutions, including Fraud Detection, Alerts, eStatements, and OFX. Corillian's fraud prevention solutions use Preemptive Forensics™ to protect web sites from phishers, hackers, and fraudsters. Corillian's strong authentication solution provides a low-cost solution for multi-factor authentication while maintaining high user satisfaction. Empowered by Corillian solutions, some of the world’s most visionary financial institutions provide their customers with the tools to manage their finances more effectively and securely. For more information about Corillian Corporation, visit the company’s web site at http://www.corillian.com.

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WealthServ Insurance to support independent Associates across Canada

EDS SOLCORP announced it has signed a contract with PPI Financial Group (PPI) for the licensing of the WealthServ Insurance solution.

PPI, with its marketing offices in major cities across Canada, provides the tools, training and support to enable its Associates to service their clients with innovative and customized solutions.

“We found WealthServ Insurance provided the best solution for consolidating the information from our various back-office systems,” said Jack Brown, Vice President Marketing Resources and Technology, PPI Financial Group. “Through a single user interface, PPI will be able to access real-time information from any Internet enabled computer.”

“The solution at PPI will be Canadian Insurance Transaction Standardization (CITS) ready and enable the centralized administration of their business,” said Alex Sweeny, Vice President Strategic Business Development, EDS SOLCORP. “Using WealthServ Insurance and being directly connected to their suppliers by using CITS standards, will improve overall efficiency, reduce the cost of administering business, and result in greater revenues for PPI.”

With WealthServ Insurance, EDS SOLCORP’s web-based enterprise system, organizations can complete and send applications and forms, track business in real-time, and view and administer in- force business through a single interface. WealthServ is fully compliant with legislation protecting personal information and regulating electronic documents in the United States and Canada.

About the PPI Financial Group

PPI Financial Group is one of Canada’s largest marketing general agencies (MGA) and is dedicated to meeting the needs of specialized independent life insurance professionals with innovative, often customized, insurance and financial products. Founded in 1978, PPI specializes in helping their Associates serve the corporate and high net worth client markets.

Learn more at www.ppi.ca.

About EDS SOLCORP

EDS SOLCORP, a global business unit within EDS, is a leader in software solutions and services for the life insurance and wealth management industries. For 25 years, EDS SOLCORP solutions have helped customers reduce their total cost of administration, accelerate time-to-market for new products, and streamline their infrastructure.

Visit us at http://www.solcorp.com

About EDS

EDS (NYSE:EDS) is a leading global technology services company delivering business solutions to its clients. EDS founded the information technology outsourcing industry more than 40 years ago. Today, EDS delivers a broad portfolio of information technology and business process outsourcing services to clients in the manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, communications, energy, transportation, and consumer and retail industries and to governments around the world.

Learn more at http://www.eds.com

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Optimizing business processes through innovative technology is one of the central tenets of Microsoft's IVC program. Given its proven track record of providing effective, people-centric, client management solutions for insurance professionals, we are pleased to include Salentica in our growing list of IVC partners 

Salentica Systems Inc., a leading provider of Client Management Systems and software solutions, based on Microsoft CRM 3.0, for financial services firms announced it has been named as a member of the Insurance Value Chain (IVC) program. Highlighting this honor, Salentica will be participating in the Microsoft Insurance Executive Forums being held in Hartford Conn. and New York, NY Dec. 11 and 14, 2006, respectively.

Salentica's CRM products, purposely built for the financial services market fits within the core philosophy of Microsoft's Insurance Value Chain. Microsoft and the Insurance Value Chain partners' mission is to create composite applications around common insurance workflows - all in an effort to alleviate post-purchase integration hurdles on the part of the insurance customers.

Capitalizing on deep domain expertise within financial services and built around the Microsoft CRM each Salentica platform, "desk" is designed to provide vital management information that enables insurance companies to optimize their time spent with brokers and advisors.

DistributorDesk allows insurance industry users to work with Microsoft CRM in a manner that reflects their normal business dealings within all their sales channels -- supporting proprietary or non-proprietary sales distribution models. Whether a distributor, broker, captive or non-captive agent, or part of the management team, the Salentica industry-specific modules, will allow access to all the information that you need.

"Our intent with Salentica and Microsoft has always been to expand our deep domain expertise to develop effective, easy-to-use, client management solutions which make a difference in the financial services marketplace" said Bill Rourke, President Salentica Systems. "We are very pleased to be a partner in the Insurance Value Chain as it enhances our relationship with Microsoft, adds further depth to our solutions and therefore our customers."

The core functionality inherent in all of Salentica's products remains but has been extended to include Insurance centric functionality. Updates from sales and dealer code transactions are automatically written into the functionality of the CRM, eliminating issues around database integration or report writers. Within the one click notion distributors can have a complete, minute view of sales and dealer code splits and shares, allowing them to focus on fully supporting their most efficient producers. Alerts have been enabled to view transparent transactions where there is no rep assigned to a code.

"Optimizing business processes through innovative technology is one of the central tenets of Microsoft's IVC program. Given its proven track record of providing effective, people-centric, client management solutions for insurance professionals, we are pleased to include Salentica in our growing list of IVC partners," said Bill Hartnett, insurance industry managing director, Microsoft U.S. Financial Services Group.

Salentica' DistributorDesk based on .Net technology supports access to transactional back-office information such as sales, commissions and holdings. Microsoft's commitment to support the information worker, including mobile users, allows Salentica to extend the core functionality for the unique needs of the financial services industry. Leveraging integration with the familiar Outlook platform, Salentica's modules are easy to use which ensures high adoption rates.

About Salentica Systems Inc.

Salentica provides client management solutions for financial service firms in mutual fund wholesaling, investment banks, institutional asset management, private wealth management, retail brokerage and insurance. Built around the Microsoft .NET platform and Microsoft CRM, Salentica extends the platform by creating purpose built components to address specific needs of the financials services market. Salentica's customer base includes many of North America's largest financial services firms.

www.salentica.com

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Corillian’s advanced online banking features and payments flexibility to help strengthen online offering and enhance customer experience

Corillian Corp. (NASDAQ: CORI), the top provider of online banking, payment and security solutions for the financial services industry, announced that Bremer Financial Corporation, a $6.6 billion regional financial services company headquartered in St. Paul, Minn, has selected Corillian to provide next-generation online banking and payment services to its more than 200,000 customers.

Bremer – committed to providing an improved user experience for customers – will leverage Corillian Consumer Banking and Corillian Payments to build on the bank’s existing online banking and payment efforts. Corillian Consumer Banking was selected for its technology, depth of functionality and industry best practices. Corillian Payments will enhance the end user experience while also providing Bremer with flexibility in processing electronic payments and generating cost savings for the bank.

In addition to Corillian Consumer Banking and Corillian Payments, Bremer will implement Corillian Family Banking and Corillian Personal Money Manger (PMM). Corillian Family Banking is a holistic financial management solution allowing users to securely grant access to family members and other joint account holders, as well as third parties to more effectively manage their finances. Corillian Personal Money Manager (PMM) is an innovative transaction reporting and analysis solution, which significantly expands online access to account history and enhances online reporting and tracking.

"At Bremer, we continually look for ways to enhance the service experience of our clients," said Tom Ryan, sr. vice president and chief information officer. "By teaming with Corillian, we will take our internet site to a new level – providing services that our clients need and want. This enhancement represents a significant investment in our technology and reflects Bremer’s commitment to take action on behalf of our clients. This partnership will allow us to enhance the customer experience while also helping us manage costs."

With Corillian Consumer Banking, Bremer can offer an industry-leading online banking service to its customers, while also maintaining the ability to tailor the site with flexible configuration. This will enable Bremer to maximize its online banking effectiveness and further differentiate the financial institution as it meets the growing needs of its customers.

Corillian Payments will allow Bremer to gain strategic control of the payments process. With flexible routing and payment options, Corillian Payments will enable Bremer to have ownership of the payment information and determine the most flexible and cost-effective method for processing electronic and paper payments.

"Our partnership with Bremer Financial is another example of financial institutions looking to Corillian to help them get to the next level in delivering online financial services to their customers," said Alex Hart, president and CEO of Corillian. "More and more financial institutions are coming to Corillian because their current systems aren’t providing the features or performance that people expect from the online channel. The capabilities available in Corillian Consumer Banking are enabling customers like Bremer to strategically focus on the online channel to improve the customer experience, drive down costs and seek out revenue opportunities."

About Bremer Financial Corporation
Bremer Financial Corporation is a privately held, $6.6 billion regional financial services company jointly owned by its employees and the Otto Bremer Foundation. Founded in 1943 by Otto Bremer, the company is headquartered in Saint Paul, MN and provides a comprehensive range of banking, investment, trust, and insurance services to over 100 locations in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin and online at Bremer.com. Company profits are distributed in the form of charitable grants by the Otto Bremer Foundation to communities throughout the company’s footprint.

About Corillian Corporation
Corillian is the market leader of online banking, payment and security solutions to the financial services industry. With 30 of the top 100 U.S. banks and 21 of the top 100 U.S. credit unions as customers, Corillian serves over 35 million online banking end users. Corillian provides the most flexible, scalable and secure set of online banking applications across multiple lines of business, as well as an extensive set of integration solutions to enable seamless connectivity between legacy systems and Web and database applications. Corillian features integrated applications across Consumer Banking, Small Business Banking, Business and Consumer Payments, Wealth Management, Credit Card Management, and Corporate Cash Management, as well as enterprise wide solutions, including Fraud Detection, Alerts, eStatements, and OFX. Corillian's fraud prevention solutions use Preemptive Forensics™ to protect web sites from phishers, hackers, and fraudsters. Corillian's strong authentication solution provides a low-cost solution for multi-factor authentication while maintaining high user satisfaction. Empowered by Corillian solutions, some of the world’s most visionary financial institutions provide their customers with the tools to manage their finances more effectively and securely. For more information about Corillian Corporation, visit the company’s web site at http://www.corillian.com.

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Novell to support Open XML format to advance document interoperability

Novell announced that the Novell® edition of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite will now support the Office Open XML format, increasing interoperability between OpenOffice.org and the next generation of Microsoft Office. Novell is cooperating with Microsoft and others on a project to create bi-directional open source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office, with the word processing translator to be available first, by the end of January 2007. The translators will be made available as plug-ins to Novell’s OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites.

“Novell supports the OpenDocument format as the default file format in OpenOffice.org because it provides customer choice and flexibility, but interoperability with Microsoft Office has also been critical to the success of OpenOffice.org,” said Nat Friedman, Novell chief technology and strategy officer for Open Source. “OpenOffice.org is very important to Novell, and as our customers deploy Linux* desktops across their organizations, they're telling us that sharing documents between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office is a must-have. The addition of Open XML support reflects Novell's commitment to providing enterprise customers the tools they need to be successful, from the desktop to the data center.”

Chris Capossela, corporate vice president, Microsoft Business Division Product Management Group, said, “This is further evidence to our mutual customers that Novell and Microsoft have the same commitment to document interoperability and customer choice for document technology. As a leader in the open source community, Novell can help us make sure the Open XML translation technology works well across different applications and platforms. Novell has already provided contributions to the Ecma Open XML standard, and this commitment to support the Open XML format via their product makes it work for customers.”

The Open XML format is an open standard file format for office applications that can be freely implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms. The Open XML format was originated by Microsoft and standardized by the Ecma International organization’s technical committee, TC45. It is presented for Ecma General Assembly approval on December 7, 2006, with the intention to offer the specification for formal ISO/JTC1 standardization. Open XML is the default format for the recently released Microsoft Office 2007. The Open XML format is also available through free updates to past Microsoft Office versions.

With an estimated 100 million users, OpenOffice.org is a full-featured, open source office productivity suite with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications. OpenOffice.org currently supports the OpenDocument (ODF) file format, which is an ISO-standardized, XML-based file format specification for office applications maintained by the open source community. The OpenDocument format ensures information saved in spreadsheets, documents and presentations is freely accessible to any OpenDocument-supporting application. OpenOffice.org is available free of charge at http://www.openoffice.org. Novell provides and supports OpenOffice.org for both Linux and Windows* as part of its SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop and Novell Open Workgroup Suite offerings, respectively.

The open source Open XML/ODF Translator project can be viewed at this internet location: http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter.

Novell is a member of and an active contributor to both the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications Technical Committee, the body that manages and publishes the OpenDocument standard, and the Ecma International Technical Committee (TC45) that develops, manages and publishes the Open XML standard. Novell is the second-leading contributor to the OpenOffice.org project.

For more information on the broader partnership between Novell and Microsoft, visit http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft and http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab.

About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers infrastructure software for the Open Enterprise. We are a leader in enterprise-wide operating systems based on Linux and open source and the security and systems management services required to operate mixed IT environments. We help our customers minimize cost, complexity and risk, allowing them to focus on innovation and growth. For more information, visit http://www.novell.com.

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