Helping insurance companies jump-start development projects for line-of-business software applications that use common ACORD standards, Microsoft Corp. today released the Microsoft Insurance Value Chain (IVC) Software Factory for ACORD Standards at ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum 2008.

The IVC Software Factory for ACORD Standards is a set of development tools and assets that use the Microsoft .NET Framework to aid insurance firms and software vendors in the integration of existing applications and business logic with ACORD Web services. Targeting the property and casualty and life and annuity businesses, the IVC Software Factory is an extension of Microsoft�s broader IVC Architecture Framework, released in 2006.

Hosted on CodePlex, Microsoft�s open source development portal (http://www.codeplex.com), and available free to the insurance community, the IVC Software Factory includes ready-to-run Microsoft Visual Studio development projects, samples, white papers and a next-generation Microsoft Silverlight 2 reference user interface � all of which can be consumed and implemented within insurance environments today.