<p>PLANO, Texas – In a quiet move, EDS named Scott Butler president of its Credit Union Industry Group effective April 9. Butler has been with the credit union group for 17 years, most recently as client executive in charge of credit union business development. EDS touches about 2,400 credit unions through either ATM services, Internet banking or core processing. Butler said EDS has about 1,500 credit unions as core processing clients. Butler replaces Neil Griffiths who only served in the position since last August. Griffiths, who was preparing to relocate his family from Portland, Oregon to Plano, Texas changed his mind on uprooting his family, according to an EDS official. Prior to Griffiths, Dana Rowlett served in the position. Rowlett was one of the more vocal and public leaders of EDS' credit union division, pledging to make customer service a high priority for the unit. EDS sees value in its credit union clients, said Butler. A few years back it decided to sell off its community bank division, yet it kept its credit union division. That community bank division morphed into what is today Aurum Technology. "The credit union business has for 30 years been an important part of what EDS does. It's a business where we believe we're creating some leverage for credit unions," said Butler. "Leveraging some large-scale capabilities that big banks may have, allows our smaller credit unions to compete with the bigger players." So what exactly is Butler's role? He said he's responsible for strategic direction, customer operational excellence, sales, and anything to do with the credit union group. "We're always planning. We're always going to be active," said Butler. EDS' two core processing offerings our EDS Premier (online) and EDS CUBE (in-house). There's also CUBICS, an in-house solution for CUs with $50 million in assets and less. Over the years EDS has phased out some CU core processing offerings, like it did with World Computer years ago and more recently with Flagship, which EDS announced it would be phasing out in 1999. Approximately 90 credit unions were using Flagship when it announced plans to discontinue it. EDS hopes to have all CUs off the product by June of this year. EDS has about 1,500 CU core processing clients, but doesn't have as many of the large CUs as competitors such as Symitar and USERS. Butler said EDS will be actively seeking new sales on all fronts under his direction. "There's been a lot of consolidation. Now we're down to just a couple of players. We're going to be more aggressive in terms of gaining marketshare in sales of core applications. The industry is pretty well served. I think there are technologies that are aging and changing. It's going to be important to see how the different players make investments in the future." Butler stressed that EDS' credit union division is about much more than just core processing. Case in point is Virtual Branch, its Internet banking solution. EDS made headlines last year for a $750,000 investment in CUNA Network Services, which gave it a 5% ownership stake in CNS. CUNA Network Services is initially marketing EDS' Virtual Branch, but more products may be included down the road. Both CNS and EDS report that they're pleasantly surprised by how well they've done in the relationship, yet they would not reveal sales figures at press time. EDS is also entrenched in the corporate network. It is the vendor behind U.S. Central's Corporate Credit Union Network, an online solution for corporates to do business with U.S. Central. Other examples of its diversity, said Butler, include its alliance with WesPay to test the nation's first digital image check truncation service. Butler said EDS is also focused on helping credit unions with Internet lending. Butler's calling card so far seems to be figuring out how the credit union division can better utilize all that EDS offers. "The key in the future is to allow the credit union division to go to other parts of EDS to bring in expertise on an ad hoc basis to help launch new product lines," he said.</p>