Oakland, CA – Tue, March 20, 2007

OAKLAND, Calif., March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- In support of its initiative to enhance the service it provides to schools and student lenders, ELM Resources today announced the hiring of Brilliant Blue, a New Marketing marketing agency with strong creative and technical capabilities, to enrich and simplify the user experience within its website.

ELM Resources has selected IBM WebSphere Portal as its platform. WebSphere Portal is a robust and flexible environment easily adaptable for a variety of on-demand online applications and services. Brilliant Blue has been selected as the company to redefine the user experience. Brilliant Blue will make use of IBM's WebSphere Portal dynamic UI framework, Web Content Manager, in addition to building custom AJAX-enabled UI components to enrich the user experience, and simplify online delivery of student loans. Ajax is a JavaScript and XML based framework that adds powerful interactive capabilities. The first changes to the ELM Resources site (www.elmresources.com) will go live this summer with a full implementation in spring of 2008.

"As the nation's only open, lender-neutral student loan delivery system, we're committed to providing the best possible service to the schools and lenders who work with us," said ELM Resources CEO Jeff Connors.

"We are excited to be working with Brilliant Blue on our user interface, and are looking forward to providing the best possible user experience for our schools and lenders," said ELM Resources SVP of Sales and Marketing, Gary Parkhurst.

"We've been asked to further enhance ELM Resources already strong user experience, and are looking forward to expanding on the WebSphere Portal presentation and portlet framework for a rich and simplified ELM Resources web user experience," said Phil Thompson, Principal and Chief Technology Officer of Brilliant Blue.

"People associate things like a company's name and logo with its brand," added Peter Ashworth, Principal and Chief Creative Officer for Brilliant Blue. "But user experience -- how a company's customers think of them -- is an important part of a company's brand, too. Our goal is to make improvements that change the experience lenders and schools have when they use the ELM Resources site and add value to ELM Resources' brand."

About ELM Resources

With a mission to provide schools complete freedom-of-choice and equal access to all education financing providers, ELM Resources was established in 1994 as the only open, non-proprietary, lender-neutral student loan delivery system in the industry. Through its members -- lenders, guarantors, and loan servicers -- ELM administers a common, open, and universal student loan delivery system that seamlessly links the diverse computing platforms involved in processing and disbursing a student loan. ELM offers students and schools the convenience of using a single data channel for both alternative and government guaranteed loans, regardless of which loan provider is serving the customer. For more information, please visit www.elmresources.com.

About Brilliant Blue

Brilliant Blue leverages the integrated power of creating strategy, brand marketing, and today's advanced systems & technologies -- to drive growth.

With more than 200 clients, Brilliant Blue (http://www.brilliantblue.com) is a complete marketing and brand development agency providing a full range of strategic planning, traditional and web-based marketing, advertising, and creative capabilities -- combined with extensive in-house capabilities of technology, software development, and business systems application development and delivery, with an in-depth experience of both licensed software and the Open Source community. By combining these major elements as a complete marketing solution, the company is able to offer complete and comprehensive marketing services without the need to outsource deliverables, allowing better control of quality, cost, timelines, and the delivery of optimal enterprise solutions.

SOURCE Brilliant Blue