TechnologyRoadmapOctober 2019

1Technology Roadmap

TechnologyMaking the most of third-party technologiesAvaloq clients benefit from our commitment to working closely with the world’s leading technology vendors, adopting and supporting the most appropriate versions of new technologies as they become available.

Operating systems

• We support the Oracle database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and

Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris SPARC and x86-64 and IBM AIX in the

versions Oracle has certified for the appropriate database versions.

We phase out support for Oracle Solaris x86-64 because Oracle

is no longer fully committed to Solaris x86-64. Solaris x86-64 is

only supported up to and including ACP Release 4.10 and AFP

releases released before the end of 2020, including fix packs to

these releases.

• We support JBoss EAP for Avaloq Front Platform (AFP) releases

before Q2 2020 (Front Workplace) / Q4 2020 (Web Banking) on

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the versions Red Hat has certified.

Container platform

• Avaloq is adopting containerized deployment on Red Hat OpenShift for all components except the Oracle database. This includes AFP Web Banking, Front Workplace, Avaloq Core Platform (ACP) adapters, Open and Community APIs, as well as self-contained systems, such as Goal-based Wealth Management.

• OpenShift is a mandatory technical requirement for these artefacts. No other Kubernetes distributions are supported.

• OpenShift must be configured as prescribed by Avaloq (https://docs.avaloq.com/acpr/), which is a secure enterprise setup including mandatory image signing and a closed network policy.

• It is technically OK to run non-Avaloq workload on the same OpenShift cluster, for consolidation and higher resource usage.

• We require Red Hat AMQ (Kafka) in the container platform.

• We currently support OpenShift 3.11. We will upgrade to OpenShift 4.x in 2020 once OpenShift 4.x has the required enterprise features, such as disconnected installation.

• ACP adapters, such as JMS Adapter and FIXBridge, are supported both on Red Hat OpenShift and with traditional deployment on ACP Releases 4.8, 4.9, and 4.10. Starting with ACP Release 5.1, ACP adapters (except MQBridge and adapters running only on Microsoft Windows) are only supported on OpenShift.

Oracle databases

• Avaloq supports different Oracle releases for different ACP Releases as follows:

° ACP Releases 4.1 to 4.6 are supported on Oracle 12.1.0.2 only. Because Oracle extended support for 12.1.0.2 ends on 31 July 2021, Avaloq does not offer extended support for ACP Release 4.6 (and lower) beyond that date. The first line in the figure below shows extended Avaloq support for Release 4.6; extended support for Releases 4.1 – 4.5 ends earlier.

° ACP Releases 4.7 and 4.8 currently require Oracle 18c and Avaloq will support Oracle 18c for these ACP Releases until 8 June 2021, when Oracle’s support for Oracle 18c ends. This saves Avaloq clients who upgrade to ACP 4.9 or higher before this date an Oracle upgrade. Avaloq will support Oracle 19c (Oracle long-term support release) for ACP Releases 4.7 and 4.8 (with extended support from Avaloq) from April 2021. Clients who stay on ACP Release 4.7 or 4.8 beyond June 2021 must upgrade to Oracle 19c because Oracle does not provide extended support for Oracle 18c.

° ACP Releases 4.9 requires Oracle 19c as of January 2020. The following figure gives an overview. Release periods include chargeable Avaloq extended support.

31 October 2019Confidential | 1

4.7

4.8

4.9

4.10 - 5.x

4.1- 4.6

2020 2021

18c

18c

18c

12.1.0.2 – Oracle extended support chargeable

12.1.0.2 Oracle Extended Support until 31.07.2021

18c until 08.06.2021 (no extended Oracle support available)

19c

19c

19c

19c

19c (Oracle extended support from 01.04.2023)

Oracle

2Technology Roadmap

° Oracle had waived extended support fees for Oracle 12.1 until 31 July 2019 (My Oracle Support Doc ID 742060.1). Clients who purchased their licence from Oracle or a third party need to negotiate with Oracle individually. Avaloq clients who have an embedded Oracle licence from Avaloq may contact their Avaloq key account manager for further information and for the potential commercial impact on the support and maintenance costs of the embedded licences.

° Oracle has switched to an annual release model. Cloud versions are released in Q1 and on-premises versions later in the same calendar year. Roughly every three years, there will be a release with long-term support (LTS). The first LTS release is 19c. Avaloq plans to focus on the LTS releases, e.g. it will likely not support Oracle 20c, unless the usage of non-LTS releases is required to reduce Oracle extended support costs as in the current transition to the new Oracle release model and unless there is significant other benefit.

° For Oracle 18c and higher, Avaloq supports the quarterly Release Updates rather than the Release Update Revisions (My Oracle Support Doc ID 2285040.1).

• The AFP and microservices must run on the same Oracle patchset (12.1 and older) or annual feature release (12.2 and higher) as the linked ACP database.

• From ACP Release 4.5 / AFP Release 2.4.33 onwards, we accept virtualization on x86 on production systems, with certain restrictions. Details can be found in Technical Requirements for Avaloq Core – Technical Requirements (doc. ID: 1079) and Avaloq Front Platform – Technical Requirements (doc. ID: 2438).

• From ACP Release 4.5 onwards, we support Flashback Database. Please read the caution remarks in the Oracle Configuration Guide – Installation Guide (doc. ID: 1199).

• Oracle Exadata without Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) is already supported like any other x86 system with Automatic Storage Management (ASM). Two Avaloq clients use Exadata in production.

• Avaloq will not support the Oracle Database Appliance, because it does not permit the required patching.

• We have implemented support for Oracle RAC on Linux x86-64 in ACP Release 4.5. One client successfully tested it but did not take it into production due to an internal change of priorities. We will list RAC in Technical Requirements for Avaloq Core – Technical Requirements (doc. ID: 1079) once we have our first client in production.

• Transparent Data Encryption is supported for AFP and will be supported for ACP Release 4.9.

• Oracle Data Guard continues to be tolerated and recommended (preferably asynchronous, unless latency is very low). Support for Data Guard is on our roadmap without a committed delivery date.

Java and JEE

• We have made three changes: First, we switched on Red Hat Enterprise Linux from Oracle JDK to Red Hat OpenJDK. Second, we embed the JRE/JDK for Windows-based components of new releases. Third, we use a non-Oracle JRE/JDK for containerized components.

° All Java-based components provided by Avaloq of releases that were shipped until the end of March 2019 (including later fix packs to such releases) require IBM SDK for Java on IBM AIX and Oracle JDK on all other operating systems (Linux x86-64, Solaris SPARC and x86-64, Microsoft Windows). Avaloq will not add support for other JDKs (e.g. AdoptOpenJDK) for these software versions because the reconfiguration (e.g. garbage collection) and retesting effort for clients and Avaloq would be too high.

° In April 2019, we made the following changes for new releases of Java-based components provided by Avaloq:

� Avaloq ships Java-based components that run on Windows, such as the ice Workbench, MultiLine adapter (Isabel), SOFiE, and SIX Telekurs apiD with an embedded JRE/JDK.

� Avaloq will ship Docker images with a non-Oracle JDK. Hence, Avaloq clients do not need an Oracle Java SE subscription for Avaloq containers.

� Non-containerized applications that run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux x86-64 require Red Hat OpenJDK.

� The JDK requirements for other operating systems (Oracle JDK for Oracle Linux x86-64, Oracle Solaris SPARC and x86-64; IBM SDK for Java for IBM AIX) remain unchanged, but the licensing changes for Oracle JDK.

� Except for embedded JRE/JDKs shipped by Avaloq for Windows-based and containerized components, Avaloq clients are responsible for proper licensing of JDKs.

� Avaloq will make new versions of software components with embedded JRE/JDK available whenever a new JRE/JDK version with a relevant security fix is available.

° The following table provides a summary:

PlatformUntil March 2019

Since April 2019

Microsoft Windows Oracle JDK Embedded

Containerized applications

Embedded

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Oracle JDK Red Hat OpenJDK

Oracle Linux Oracle JDK

Oracle Solaris SPARC/x86-64

Oracle JDK

IBM AIX IBM SDK for Java

3Technology Roadmap

° These changes were triggered by licensing changes from Oracle and quality optimizations.

� Oracle JDK 8 has required commercial support for security and bug fixes since February 2019. The last free version of Java 8 was provided in January 2019 and the first version requiring a subscription in April 2019. Since February 2019, clients running software that requires Oracle JDK 8 have been able to choose between using the latest free version provided by Oracle or paying Oracle subscriptions.

� Oracle JDK 11 and higher will only be available to paying clients. Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux clients will be required to purchase Oracle JDK subscriptions for Oracle JDK 11.

� IBM provides IBM SDK for Java 8 for IBM AIX. IBM SDK for Java 8 for AIX will be supported until April 2022 (extended support until 2025). If IBM SDK for Java 11 for AIX will not be released in H1 2020, we’ll switch to AdoptOpenJDK for AIX.

� Red Hat OpenJDK for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and development on Windows) is included with subscriptions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift. Red Hat also provides commercial support for Red Hat OpenJDK on Microsoft Windows.

� The free OpenJDK only receives security patches from Oracle for six months. IBM and others have announced that they will provide security patches for LTS versions through AdoptOpenJDK for four years. This is not sufficient for all Avaloq products. For example, ACP adapters of certain releases could only be supported for less than one year without a JDK version upgrade instead of the standard two years (plus extended support).

� Several other vendors, such as Amazon and Azul provide alternative JDKs (based on OpenJDK) with long-term support for some platforms.

� Roughly every three years, there will be a JDK with long-term support, and Avaloq plans to use and support only such releases in production.

� See https://goo.gl/DHcAC8 for more information.

• Avaloq will switch to Java 11 for new releases in 2020, once IBM SDK for Java 11 is available. Avaloq already now embeds JRE/JDK 11 with selected Windows and containerized applications.

• Avaloq closely follows GraalVM Native Image and may use it for faster start-up times and lower RAM usage once the technology is stable.

• All AFP releases up to and including 2.4.29 support JBoss EAP 6. AFP Releases 2.4.30 and higher (up to and including Q1 2020 for Front Workplace and Q3 2020 for Web Banking) support JBoss EAP 7. No JBoss EAP will be needed for the containerized version of AFP in H2 2019 and beyond.

Web technologies

• We are switching from AngularJS 1.x to Angular 8+ and Angular Material. New UIs will be based on Angular starting in Q1 2020. Web Banking, Front Workplace and Goal-based Wealth Management will be available with Angular in Q3 2020.

Google support for AngularJS 1.x will end in July 2021.

• We support SAML for authentication of web-based applications and JWT/OAuth2 for REST APIs. We are transitioning to supporting only JWT/OAuth2.

Browsers

• On desktops and laptops, Avaloq supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge in the current version and all older versions that were current in the past six months. In addition, we support all versions of Firefox ESR that are still supported by Mozilla. For Microsoft Edge, we also support the current default versions of Windows 10 Enterprise and the current version of Windows Server. Other desktop browsers are not supported. This applies to all Avaloq products and services, including but not limited to Web Banking, Issue Tool, tools.avaloq.com, and developer.avaloq.com.

New versions of browsers typically contain important security fixes and should therefore be deployed quickly. Hence, Avaloq’s six-month policy is no real restriction.

• Internet Explorer 11 is supported in AFP Web Banking releases until May 2020 (up to and including Release 2.4.61). From June 2020, Internet Explorer will no longer be supported in new releases of AFP. Internet Explorer 11 is still supported for bug fixes (not new features, if any) of new fix packs after May for Releases 2.4.61 and older.

We recommend that Avaloq clients display already now a warning on the logon page (each logon, not just main portal) if the page is called from IE11.

IE11 has been in maintenance mode since January 2016, with only minor fixes. IE11 has many serious problems, including security flaws (no CSP, open bugs, insecure architecture), performance problems (no HTTP/2, no CSS grid layout), UI/code maintenance restrictions (no CSS variables, Web Components, other newer features) and non-compliant accessibility. Microsoft advises Windows 10 users to use Edge. Avaloq recommends that Windows 7 and 8 users use Google Chrome or Firefox, or Microsoft Edge if and when it becomes available for Windows 7 and 8.

• Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android are supported for the versions of the mobile operating systems listed below.

• Google Chrome is the recommended browser for bank-internal and EAM applications, such as the Front Workplace. Internet Explorer 11 is not supported for these applications. Microsoft Edge switching to Chromium may make Edge also a recommended browser.

4Technology Roadmap

Third-party release compatibility roadmapAvaloq’s policy for supported third-party software releases is explained in detail in our Avaloq Technical Requirements Policy – Technical Requirements (doc. ID: 2412). Release dates for third-party software and details of Avaloq support for these releases are based on current assumptions and may change at any time without notice. Information on third-party vendors’ support for their own products, such as Java and Windows, is quoted above in italics and is for guidance only. Please check with the individual vendors directly for definitive details.

Recommended actions for clients with on-premises deployment• OpenShift: Plan and budget the rollout of OpenShift for 2020 if

you have not already rolled it out. Contact your Avaloq key account manager for licensing of Red Hat OpenShift. Avaloq acts as an embedded reseller for Red Hat OpenShift, providing excellent terms.

• Oracle database: Upgrade to ACP Release 4.7 or higher as soon as possible to avoid Oracle extended support cost. If you are on ACP Release 4.7 or 4.8, check the announcements whether these releases stay on Oracle 18c or require 19c in Q2 2020.

• JBoss EAP: Cancel your subscriptions for after the switch to containerized versions of AFP.

• Java JDK

° On Oracle Solaris SPARC/x86-64 and Oracle Linux: Purchase commercial support for Oracle JDK from 1 February 2019.

° On Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows: switch to new Avaloq releases that support Red Hat OpenJDK or provide an embedded JRE/JDK. Decide the systems for which commercial support is to be bought for the period between 1 February 2019 and the upgrade to new ABS releases that do not require Oracle JDK.

° On AIX: no action required

• Upgrade your own AFP-JS-based BankletsTM to the new framework version based on Angular 8+ in Q3 2020.

• Browsers: Roll out Google Chrome for bank-internal and EAM applications.

Mobile OS

• Our policy is to support the current version of iOS and the previous version. At the time of writing, these are iOS 13 and iOS 12.

• We support Android 5 and higher.

Microsoft Windows for IntegrationServer, SmartClient and .NET-based adapters

• Server: We support the versions of Windows Server that are supported by Microsoft, typically six months after their release. The IntegrationServer requires the Oracle client in a version certified for the release of Windows Server that is being used. By default, Avaloq requires that the same version of Oracle server and client are used. As an exception, the IntegrationServer on Windows Server 2016 and 2019 require the Oracle 12.2 client for ACP releases up to ACP Release 4.6.

• Client: We support current versions of Microsoft clients, currently Windows 7, 8.1 and 10.

• Current versions of Citrix XenApp are supported. Contact Avaloq for information on support for other desktop virtualization and VDI solutions.

• The IntegrationServer, SmartClient and .NET-based adapters of ACP Releases 4.4 and lower require .NET 3.5SP1. ACP Release 4.5 and higher require a minimum of .NET 4.7 or higher within the 4.x series.

5Technology Roadmap

Roadmap disclaimerThe content of this paper is for information only and is intended to outline the general product direction; accordingly, it should not be relied upon for the purpose of making purchasing decisions. The information provided is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality.

Any references to the development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for these products are for information purposes only, and Avaloq has sole discretion to make changes to any of these parameters at any time for any reason or no reason. Product capabilities, timeframes and features are subject to change without notice. Avaloq neither represents nor warrants the accuracy or completeness of the information. This document is provided ‘as is’, without any warranty of any kind, nor any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

That said, it is our goal to deliver what we outline in this roadmap.

About

FeedbackWe welcome feedback on the content of this document via your Avaloq key account or partner manager.

Version

First published: 10 September 2019

Last update: 28 October 2019

6Technology Roadmap

Avaloq is driving the digital transformation and automation of the financial services industry.

Based on our fully integrated banking software, we create powerful digital experiences provided through a standardized Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) model to banks and wealth managers. Our solutions give financial institutions the freedom to focus on channel and product innovation, client service, client trust and growth, while Avaloq ensures a seamless operation behind the scenes.

158 banks and wealth managers – with more than CHF 4,500bn in assets managed worldwide – trust Avaloq, our products and our experience. Our clients are the leading banks of today and tomorrow.

About Avaloq: simplicity for a new era

Avaloq is the only independent provider for the financial services industry to both develop and operate its own software, which makes us a world leader in efficient banking solutions. To further spur innovation, we closely work with clients, other fintechs, leading universities and hundreds of third-party developers in a uniquely collaborative ecosystem we call avaloq.one.

Headquartered in Switzerland, Avaloq has more than 2,000 employees; three R&D centres in Zurich, Edinburgh and Manila; and three service centres in Switzerland, Singapore and Germany. We also have a presence in the world’s most demanding financial and innovation centres, including Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Paris, Singapore and Sydney.

More information is available at www.avaloq.com

www.avaloq.com