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Fidelity National Introduces Open MLS Platform

""Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions"":http://www.fnres.com/, a division of ""Fidelity National Financial Inc."":http://www.fnf.com, a Fortune 500 provider of products, services, and technology solutions to the financial and real estate industries, is now offering its MLS customers reInsight Data, a new ""open architecture"" data sharing solution, the company announced yesterday.
The product, which will be formally unveiled at the ""2008 Realtors Conference and Expo"":http://www.realtor.org this weekend, is part of a suite of products that includes reInsight Tax (for more comprehensive neighborhood and public record data) and reInsight Mobile (to enhance Internet searching by the latest generation of hand-held devices).
Developed by Fidelity National MLS Systems and Solutions, reInsight Data is the first release by a major Multiple Listings Service (MLS) vendor that promotes an open architecture. For more than a year, Fidelity National has been preparing for the introduction of the reInsight suite, advocating a new business paradigm in which MLS vendors put the interests of the real estate professional ahead of market share, the company explained.
""The reInsight products reflect our commitment to sacrifice proprietary vendor control over our platforms in order to better serve the agents and the brokers in the field,"" said Beverly Faull, SVP and general manager of Fidelity National MLS Systems and Solutions. ""Also, it has been designed to do more than simply provide information. Its broader application is to provide insight into how best to use and interpret that information.""
According to Faull, the database systems that power the MLS features need to move toward an open database architecture that is powered by RETS (Real Estate Technology Standard). This will allow agents and brokers to utilize the productivity tools of their choosing, and more efficiently move data in and out of MLS databases. Previously, Faull says, ""that has been difficult at best.""
Fidelity National MLS’ reInsight Data is an extremely scalable, high-performance system capable of handling large numbers of listings, photos, and concurrent users and transactions, Fidelity said in a press statement. It is powerful enough to support the aggregation of a number of large MLS organizations and at the same time flexible enough to allow smaller organizations to implement and utilize it, too, the company explained.
Previously, for members of an MLS organization to access data in listing services that border or share a logical geographical area, they had to be a member of each MLS. They did separate searches in each system and, if appropriate, ran Comparative Market Analyses (CMAs) in each system.
Now, a Realtor can use the single reInsight Data aggregation system to search all of the properties in a combination of listing services based on geographical area, irrespective of which MLS posted it or any ""jurisdictional"" boundaries, Fidelity said. They can execute a search, find the listing, and look at all the detailed information available on that property using one platform. Fidelity's reInsight Data also uses a security model that employs single sign-on technology (SSO) to insure granular control of access to the system. MLS members are able to log in from their home MLS system and link directly to the data share without having to log in again.
""The data will be mapped to a single normalized data schema to which all data is converted,"" explained Rob Overman, CTO and VP of MLS technologies for Fidelity MLS Systems & Solutions. ""That uniform data language will be understood by all systems so that agents in any connected organization can immediately use it. In other words, bedrooms are always called bedrooms, exterior features are exterior features, and so on. In this way we have anticipated and established the means to smooth out differences between its customer MLS organizations.""
""The environment is right for a product like reInsight Data,"" Faull added. ""We feel that we have the solution that is best suited to the way the market is growing right now, as well as how it will evolve over the next few years.""

About Author: Carrie Bay

Carrie Bay is a freelance writer for DS News and its sister publication MReport. She served as online editor for DSNews.com from 2008 through 2011. Prior to joining DS News and the Five Star organization, she managed public relations, marketing, and media relations initiatives for several B2B companies in the financial services, technology, and telecommunications industries. She also wrote for retail and nonprofit organizations upon graduating from Texas A&M University with degrees in journalism and English.
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