Today at the BAI Retail Delivery Conference & Expo, in an effort to help banks rapidly achieve interoperability among business applications, Microsoft Corp. announced a new initiative that provides prescriptive architecture guidance, tools and reference implementations aimed at achieving consistency in banking integration.

The Microsoft� Banking Integration Factory initiative utilizes the latest advances in the Microsoft platform, Microsoft .NET and technology solutions from ARGO Data Resource Corp., Corillian Corp., Getronics, Harland Financial Solutions Inc., and Jack Henry & Associates Inc. Other industry partners supporting the initiative include AdviceAmerica Inc., Fair Isaac Corp., Fiserv Inc. and Portrait Software PLC. The initiative seeks to integrate Microsoft and partner technologies at the services level and introduce interoperability via composite line-of-business applications.

�Banks have dedicated massive efforts toward resolving integration issues between new business applications and their legacy software,� said Greg Haislip, managing director for the banking industry in the U.S. Financial Services Group at Microsoft. �The new Banking Integration Factory helps solve this problem by providing a standard approach adopted by multiple vendors, to lead to more rapid implementation.�

The Banking Integration Factory will establish a set of guidelines and tools to enable consistency in service implementations. The initiative will not develop new message standards for the banking industry, but rather will establish commonality between vendors and the services they expose. This includes creating consistency in interfaces, complying with Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) profiles to increase interoperability, and cross-cutting aspects such as security, confidentiality, configuration, exceptions and logging � all in an effort to make integration much easier.