Solving the Data Access Problem.

Mr. Scheuble is executive vice president for product development and strategy at the mortgage division of Fidelity Information Services. He has 23 years of experience in the financial services technology area, with the last 11 being devoted specifically to the mortgage industry.

In an industry notorious for inaccessible data, disparate data sources, inconsistent formats and stubborn integration challenges, the idea of simple, enterprisewide mortgage data access seems like something from an Orson Wells novel - futuristic and unlikely.

Or is it? If your organization is like most, you are faced with multiple system platforms supporting a variety of core functions and processes. Data is held hostage in a myriad of ways, with packets of information only accessible through narrowly defined channels, and rarely aggregated and centralized for access by all systems and authorized users. Tackling an enterprisewide data integration project can seem monumental and cost prohibitive, unless you think outside the box. Unless you think about the power and simplicity of Web Services technology.

Web Services is the name given to the collection of standards that extend the extensible markup language (XML) to define the interaction between two or more systems. It can become the foundation of an enterprise application integration (EAI) layer that enables the real-time, dynamic flow of information across the extended enterprise with security, flexibility and speed of implementation. Web Services technology not only facilitates real time, system-to-system access to data, but can also facilitate business-to-business transactions with third parties that need access to the same data.

This approach can bring interoperability to a fragmented mortgage industry struggling to solve its data access and integration challenges. The gateway to data content collapses from multiple entry points to a single channel, enabling the sharing of mortgage data across processes from originations to final disposition. Internal users and external partners can conduct transactions and benefit from the real-time, bidirectional flow of data between lenders and their service providers. And the speed of mortgage servicing processes will enhance customer ...