Criterion Systems Development/Business Edge
About Criterion Systems Development/Business Edge
Criterion Systems DevelopmentCriterion Systems Development of Santa Barbara, CA was founded by Rob Brandt in 1992 as a software developer and provider of applications for the Mortgage Origination market. The product, "LoanVision for Windows", was the very first Microsoft Windows compatible mortgage origination and processing system available. It's focus is ease of use, providing a WYSIWYG interface where the actual mortgage forms, such as the loan application, disclosures and verifications are filled out on screen.LoanVision was designed in a sophisticated cross platform database development language called Omnis7, and once the Windows version was launched, work began on making a version for the Apple Macintosh. The Mac version made it's debut in 1994. After filling a number of pre-orders from clients who had requested the Mac version, it became apparent that it would be difficult to reach many users in the Mac community. But as it turns out, right under their noses (across the street as a matter of fact) was a software developer whose products targeted the Macintosh Real Estate software market. This was Business Edge Software. |
Business Edge SoftwareBusiness Edge was a business unit of a company called Transoft. Transoft was starting in the mid '80s as a real estate software company targeting the Macintosh market. They developed several ground-breaking programs: ProAnalysis (1986), which is a real estate income producing property financial analysis calcualtor; Property Manager (1988), an integrated income property accounting and management system; and Real Estate Edge (1989), a contact manager for real estate professionals. In the early '90s Transoft began designing and producing sophisticated SCSI and Mac networking products and outgrew their real estate software business. Thus, they spun off the real estate software catalogue as an independent business unit named Business Edge.In 1994 Business Edge added the LoanVision mortgage software from Criterion Systems Development to it's catelogue, and marketed it to it's users successfully for a year. This was the mid '90s though, and the pull of the internet was strong, while the Mac market was dwindling. Near the end of 1995, Business Edge notified Criterion Systems Development that it would be ceasing to market all it's Mac software catalogue. |
Synergy"Synergy" is a term that describes a phenonemon where the sum of the whole is greater than it's parts. Since Criterion Systems Development already had the infrastructure and resources to support Macintosh software applications, and Business Edge had a significant installed base of users who were loyal, even fanatical, about the quality of their applications, it seemed obvious that Criterion Systems Development should take on the software catalogue of Business Edge, gaining synergy in the process. A deal was quickly worked out and Business Edge became a dba of Criterion Systems Development by October 1995. The Business Edge software catalogue has been developed supported and marketed by Criterion Systems Development since that day, with all four products going through a normal revision and upgrade schedule. |
EZ-Realty.net ("Post-What?")In the fall of 2001, Rob was doing a survey of web based "support forums" in search of a system to use on the technical support web site. While doing this survey, he discovered a very interesting open source software development project called "PostNuke". The PostNuke project has had around 100 developers working on it from all around the world, with the goal of producing a world-class "content management system" (CMS). A CMS is a system where all of the web site content is entered through a web browser and stored in databases, rather than by manually created pages of fixed content, linking them together and uploading them to a server. Individual "modules" control what type of content is being managed (i.e., real estate listings) and the CMS keeps everything working together in a seamless way. Rob immediately recognized the usefullness of a system like this to Business Edge/Criterion Systems clients: real estate and mortgage professionals. Thus over the next year EZ-Realty.net was conceived and born, based on an open source PostNuke core in use on thousands of web sites worldwide, with modules deemed useful to real estate professionals, debugged, modified, enhanced and available only on the EZ-Realty.net server. |