George Conrad, Executive Director - Mifos.org

Says microfinance isn't scaling in part because of inadequate technology. Mifos is trying to build an open and scalable platform for microfinance providers.

One of the big challenges is that they need to build local support systems. Saas is great, but banks are going to want local resources to help them. Mifos needs to build a local support ecosystem.

Been in development for 3-4 years. So far learned:

- Can't just be a project, needs to be a business
- Betting on Saas to reduce technical barrier
- Channel is required to scale
- The are no examples that fit their model

Runs on Tomcat, Windows 2K3, MySQL 5.