If you are excited about Microsoft's announcement that it will soon rent its popular Office suite of products at Office Online for small businesses to use online, you'll appreciate that such an initiative has found its way to the real estate industry.

OpenMLS has just released its Web-based Real Estate Listing Management Systems - PureXML. This MLS information management product is available for rent, and is targeted to the application service provider (ASP) market, which includes Internet MLS/listing management service companies such as ReWebCom. In case you're wondering, I had to ask, too. An ASP puts software on the Internet for consumers to rent. OpenMLS has ambitions to be the ASP to the real estate industry.

The upshot is that by renting software, end users can ease the often complex decision making process of purchasing software. "The application service provider hosts the software so you can focus on your business. We entered this market to fulfill the requirements of real estate companies that wish to focus on their business and not Internet technology (IT) issues," says Doug Greenwood, president of OpenMLS. "That means you have a web-based solution and everyone from the MLS, to the brokers, to individual offices and agents can rent the software, or rent to own."

"Exclusively using XML documents and search engine technology, we have transformed listing management into a web service. We now offer a business solution for real estate based entirely on open standards that can be delivered as a service via the Internet," explains Greenwood.

The fact that the new XML product can be rented is news enough, but the product itself is also a ground breaker. PureXML is built on an open standards framework. These standards include XML, a W3C recommendation and XSL, a W3C working draft. The real estate listings themselves conform to the RELML specification co-authored by OpenMLS and 4thWORLD Telecom, and adopted by the TADS working group.

As a listing management service, PureXML is designed to be simple, quick, clean, and easy. "The functionality must be intuitive," asserts Greenwood. Basic functionality of PureXML includes the online editing of XML listings and listing search capabilities. Both the consumer and private gateways use the same simple search interface.

PureXML operates on an inventory of XML-based listings with XSL providing the browser interface to manage these listings. "Where XML defines the listing information, XSL defines its presentation," states Greenwood.

"Adopting standards is the key strategy for real estate agents, brokers, MLSs, and service providers to take advantage of business-to-business opportunities on the web. If you wish to participate in Internet commerce, you must be XML ready," advises Greenwood.

"In the world of XML, everyone has the opportunity to use this service to manage listing inventory and to provide a consumer entry to that inventory," he says. "Anyone in the real estate industry has the capability to subscribe to this service and use it to aggregate their listing inventory and provide a consumer interface."

According to Greenwood, ASP solutions are the future of real estate listings management. "We are the first to provide it for the real estate industry. EDS, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others are providing software solutions as a service on the Internet. We are that solution for listings management," he says.

To view PureXML, visit booth 1284 (ReWebCom) at the National Association of Realtor's National Convention and Expo in Orlando Florida, or visit pureXML.com.

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Published: November 11, 1999

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