Here\u2019s a quote you\u2019ve probably heard before: \u201cImitation is the sincerest form of flattery.\u201d At MRI Software, we gladly accept the compliments, but the impersonations have gone a bit too far. <\/p>\n
We are proud to have led the revolution in bringing flexibility and openness to the real estate software industry. Our open and connected product strategy is the result of 47 years of collaborative relationships with our clients and partners. That\u2019s why we raise our eyebrows when our competitors abruptly change their market positioning to make similar claims, while at the same time, we pat ourselves on the back for being the first to introduce a winning approach for the real estate market.<\/p>\n
By now, you probably know that the software industry is trending heavily toward open technology platforms. Think IBM\u2019s acquisition of Red Hat<\/a> and the Salesforce acquisition of Mulesoft<\/a>. Open platforms that play well with others are good for business because they give clients more control and flexibility over the software – which we think is only fair, because they\u2019re paying for it. <\/p>\n When Patrick Ghilani took the reigns as CEO of MRI Software in 2014, we reinforced our declared mission: to be the first in our industry to go all in on an open platform. Later that year, we had taken action on this promise with the launch of MRI Information Exchange<\/a> (MIX), enabling our clients to exchange data between our solutions and third-party or custom applications through secure APIs.<\/p>\n By the 2016 Realcomm conference, the word was out. In an interview with Pat<\/a>, Gerry Katzman, host of Conference Live, said, \u201cYou guys went open platform. It\u2019s a risky maneuver. It presupposes that your user knows things that you don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. No more \u2018best of breed\u2019 solutions. Consumers want what\u2019s best for them. And being truly open is about more than mere interfaces or data integration<\/a>. It\u2019s about application integration and interoperability. It\u2019s about the Single Experience\u2122, when users will move back and forth between software applications from different providers without even realizing it. <\/p>\n Today, the real estate software industry has reached a tipping point, and our open and connected mission has not changed. But, interestingly enough, several of our competitors have implied that they have changed quite a bit \u2013 but have they?<\/p>\n If you believe the marketing messages of others in our industry, they are suddenly fully capable of providing the power of choice through true openness and integration with other providers, even though they have positioned themselves as a \u2018single stack\u2019 solution for the duration of their years in business. But is it really a choice when clients can only choose from that provider\u2019s own solutions? We think not.<\/p>\n With increased market demand for open platforms, and unsubstantiated claims of openness, how do prospective clients know what to believe? Organizations evaluating and comparing software providers are challenged to find the truth. But, not to worry — earlier this year, we offered some guidance in our blog, \u201c10 qualities of providers that embrace open technologies.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Healthy competition is always good for the market; however, any marketer worth their salt knows the value of competitive differentiation and unique positioning. That\u2019s why we launched a new brand identity<\/a> in 2017 reflecting MRI\u2019s commitment to give our clients the freedom to take their business where they want to go with comprehensive and flexible software solutions built atop an open and connected platform. <\/p>\n And, while we\u2019re a bit miffed to see competitors jump on our bandwagon and claim that they, too, are \u201copen,\u201d we remain confident in our heritage as the founders of the open software movement for real estate. We\u2019re years ahead of competitors that will need to rewrite their code base and rebuild legacy products to bring openness and flexibility to closed enterprise software systems. What\u2019s more, at MRI, being open is both a technology and an operational paradigm. Our Sales, Support and Development teams closely collaborate with our partners to provide joint solutions that meet the unique needs of our clients. Partners play an essential role at our annual users conference, and the MRI ecosystem was on full display earlier this year at our 2018 International Users Conference in Atlanta.<\/a><\/p>\n The misleading messages from other solution providers confirm the market demand for open platforms. Our concern is that it also creates confusion about whom to believe. It\u2019s to be expected that the competition will seize the opportunity to claim that they also provide openness, choice, and flexibility. For MRI clients, this should sound very familiar. And for those of you who aren\u2019t yet familiar with us, we look forward to helping you sift through the promises<\/a> to find out what a truly open platform really looks like. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s a quote you\u2019ve probably heard before: \u201cImitation is the sincerest form of flattery.\u201d At MRI Software, we gladly accept the compliments, but the impersonations have gone a bit too far.A brief history lesson<\/h3>\n
Lip service<\/h3>\n
Often imitated, never duplicated<\/h3>\n
\nWe are proud to have led the revolution in bringing flexib…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrisoftware.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}