Amelia's solution is designed using the Rational Unified Process, an iterative life cycle development approach well suited to the object-oriented architecture of the system itself. Weblogic and Websphere are the chosen platforms for OR2Q, as Amelia feels both BEA and IBM provide the most complete and robust application server solutions. Amelia is also undertaking a feasibility study of other application servers for those organisations that have deployed or are in the process of implementing alternative platforms.

The system was constructed upon an n-tier client server architecture. Developed entirely in Java, it provides the application with platform independence and hence all major operating systems including Windows NT/2000 and Sun Solaris are supported.

The use of leading web technologies (including EJB's, JSP's and XML) helps to ensure that the system is robust enough to meet the Operational Risk data capture, processing and reporting requirements of even the largest of corporations, regardless of their industry, whilst remaining flexible enough to meet the continually changing requirements of such organisations. The system will also adopt other universal standards including HTTP for browser protocol, TCP/IP for inter-server communication and 64-bit SSL data encryption & decryption.

The diagram provides a high level overview of OR2Q's technical architecture. Enterprise Java Beans house the business components and logic that reside on the server within the application layer. These are relayed to users via Java Server Pages displayed in a web browser, thus negating the need for any software to be installed on client machines. Via a JDBC interface, users will be able to query the system database that stores all data in each of the user domains.

The core of Amelia's Operational Risk solution therefore provides organisations with a comprehensive range of tools, enabling them to model their Entity structure and capture and analyse data across all of their user domains. It is envisaged that each client's configuration of OR2Q will evolve over time - as interfaces with existing systems are built and additional system modules developed by Amelia are deployed - and the organisation's requirements evolve in parallel with the sophistication of its Risk management methodology.

" It is envisaged that each client's configuration of OR2Q will evolve over time…. as the organisation's requirements evolve in parallel with the sophistication of its Risk management methodology".

The unparalleled flexibility and depth provided by Amelia's modular OR2Q system ensures that it can be successfully deployed in medium to large organisations across a broad spectrum of industries.