As a result, customers can choose from yet another highly scalable, cost efficient and secure platform. The banking institutes benefit from a considerably wider range of strategic flexibility and are able to reduce their cost of ownership.

The Avaloq Banking System can be run not only on RISC architectures, but also on Industry Standard x86 platforms using Oracle Solaris 10 x86-64. The operating system with its optimisation for the new Intel processors represents a secure, energy-efficient and highly scalable base for mission-critical IT systems which reduces a bank's TCO (total cost of ownership) significantly. In addition the processing rate of applications can be increased and the availability of the Avaloq Banking System maximised.

"Oracle Solaris 10 x86-64 as an enterprise class Operating System is a decisive advantage for banks", says Klaus Rausch, CTO of Avaloq Evolution Ltd. "They can now operate the Avaloq Banking System on standard servers from any certified producer." This enables the banks to replace existing systems with an integrated system based on standards, which offers the management greater strategic flexibility in the long run.

Technical Details
Oracle and Intel have optimised Solaris for the Intel® Xeon® platform and they closely collaborate to make full use of the capabilities of the new Intel® Xeon® 5600 series and the Intel® Xeon ®7500 series. These include, among other things, a highly scalable performance with up to eight cores and two threads per core. Availability is improved thanks to the Oracle Solaris Fault Management Architecture (FMA) and Intel's Machine Check Architecture (MCA), which both support the system's self-recovery properties. Furthermore, the conjunction of Solaris 10 x86 systems and Xeon processors is particularly energy-efficient. Carmine Stragapede, Intel Italy & Switzerland Regional Business Manager, explains: "Intel is delighted with yet another example of a mission critical application which now has the advantage of running on the open standard x86 architecture, as represented by both the Intel Xeon 7500 and Xeon 5600 processor family."