Technology and architecture


Development of what became Flexcube started in the second half of 1995. It was object-oriented in design and, from the outset, was intended to cover all of the areas handled by the original Microbanker, plus a number of others. Thus, it was intended to span FX, MM, trade finance, loans, and limited retail banking support. Product-related events and services were written once, were held within a repository, and were accessed via parameters to allow users to define and adapt new instruments. The development was based on Oracle Designer 2000 and Developer 2000. The choice of the Oracle database and development environment came after a long evaluation. Citil considered object repositories but these were deemed too immature.


Flexcube was written from scratch, with flexibility provided


through the object-oriented design. It was touted from the start as a system that could help banks to speed up the introduction of new products and ease the task of adapting existing products. It was sold as a modular system, with the supplier shying away from offering the technology as a toolkit, although there was often customer-specific customisation. It was client-server-based and could run on distributed servers, partly using distribution features within Oracle. The Oracle environment also facilitated multi-lingual support. As with Microbanker, the security was based on Citibank rules. It used Oracle query facilities but could also be linked to report-writers. The only part of the Oracle toolset which Citil did not adopt was the code generator, preferring to do the coding itself. At the outset, the system ran on both NT and Unix at the server or potentially any other platform that could support Oracle.


On the client, it supported Windows, Windows NT, or


Netware, with a GUI. Remote operations could do processing online or offline, with their own servers providing resilience. At this level, SQL Server was an option for the database. There have been moves to support other technology stacks over the years but, since the arrival of Oracle, the enthusiasm for this has understandably waned. Indeed, since the arrival of Oracle there has been increasing


efforts to incorporate Oracle applications and technology into Flexcube Universal Banking. Towards the end of 2006, I-flex had unveiled its Process Framework for Banking (iPFB) solution, which was intended to support process workflow definition, reengineering and execution. It was given a service-oriented architecture (SOA) tag and was touted as an enabler for banks to centralise and standardise their business processes, for integrating multiple applications and to provide a task-based user interface. The first deliverables of the integration efforts spanned Flexcube with Oracle’s Siebel CRM and aspects of its Fusion Middleware. The idea, said Oracle’s financial services VP, Ashwin Goyal, was ‘pre-integrating all existing applications into a common framework’. One part was the Oracle Application Integration Architecture (OAIA), which is meant to provide Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities across Oracle, third party and in-house developed applications. Another enabler is Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager.


Ultimately, these integrated components were meant to encapsulate functionality not only from Flexcube, Siebel and Fusion but also a US-derived lending system that had been bought by I-flex (Daybreak), the acquired Mantas for AML, Oracle ERP applications (potentially for bank-to-corporate integration) and iPFB, which by now apparently supported more than 250 processes.


The first announcement was the ‘Oracle Process


Integration Pack for Banking Account Origination’, linking Flexcube with Siebel. Via a Siebel CRM screen, users would be able to see contact details from Siebel CRM and financial account details from Flexcube. Users can set up new customers and/or accounts and transfer this information to Flexcube for booking. Also announced was Oracle Access Manager, part of Fusion


Middleware, for Flexcube, bringing identity management capabilities. The additions were all to be ‘priced options’ so would command licence fees. Also announced were Siebel CRM On Demand Financial Services Edition – Wealth Management Solution, a hosted offering for financial advisors, and Oracle Financial Services Profitability Analytics, which brought together Oracle Financial Services Applications and Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition. Release 10 of Flexcube, announced in September 2007, embodied much of the theory. It brought embedded use of a number of the Oracle components and a completely reworked front-end, which dispensed with Oracle Forms in favour of Java and XML. Using Oracle’s BPEL engine, BPM solution and Business Activity Monitor (BAM), the emphasis was on a ‘task-oriented’ user interface and process configuration within an SOA framework. It was applied to Flexcube Universal and was touted as the standard user interface. R10 apparently involved more than 50,000 man-days of development. The iPFB offering had clearly contributed to the Flexcube front-end. Some of the functionality had been used on a trade finance-related project for Barclays in India, where the bank had some specific processes that it wanted to support (Barclays’ roll-out was focused on emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Middle East, with UAE and Uganda known to be among an initial five countries live by August 2009). The front-end covered all of the Flexcube functionality


but was ‘agnostic’, said Flexcube solutions architect, Bala Chandrasekaran, as there would always be systems other than Flexcube that would need to be accessed. The Oracle BPM defined the processes, the BPEL engine ran them, the BAM monitored them. The definition included not only the process itself but also those responsible for tasks along the way, with the BPEL and BAM pieces then controlling the resultant flows. Example tasks that could lend themselves to this approach included letters of credit processing, opening accounts, and setting up a new customer. At a lower level, the new release allowed users to


configure screens; there was also a lot of clean-up within the development. European marketing head, V Senthil Kumar, added that the process enablement might not be needed by


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com 301


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