TECHNICAL NOTE

OutSystems Platform
Enterprise Cloud
Technical Specifications
OutSystems provides the only open, high-productivity application platform (PaaS) that makes
it easy to create, deploy and manage enterprise mobile and web applications - helping IT
deliver innovative business solutions fast.
OutSystems Platform enables rapid delivery of beautiful applications for all devices utilizing
responsive or device-specific web design. The Platform empowers IT to attack changing
business requirements by automating core DevOps best practices such as continuous
integration and delivery. It is available as a public cloud, private cloud and on-premises
solution.

Table of Contents
1 OutSystems Platform Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 3
1.1

Public Cloud .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3

2 OutSystems Platform Public Cloud Architecture............................................................................................................ 4

2.1

Underlying Infrastructure Provider ......................................................................................................................................................................................................4

2.2

Starter Environment Configuration .....................................................................................................................................................................................................4

2.3

Supported Stack Configurations...........................................................................................................................................................................................................6

2.4

Infrastructure Geography ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................7

2.5

Infrastructure Multi-tenancy Isolation ................................................................................................................................................................................................7

3 Security and Privacy .................................................................................................................................................................. 7

3.1

AWS Security and Compliance ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................8

3.2

Application Security ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................8

3.3

Application Lifecycle Security ................................................................................................................................................................................................................8

3.4

SSL/TLS Encryption ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9

3.5

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and VPNs ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

4 OutSystems Platform Public Cloud Services .................................................................................................................. 10

4.1

Additional Environments for Elastic Release Management...................................................................................................................................................... 10

4.2

Horizontal Scalability ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11

4.3

Vertical Scalability ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

4.4

Database Storage .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

4.5

Database Backup and Restore ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12

4.6

High Availability Database ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

4.7

High Availability Configuration and Disaster Recovery ............................................................................................................................................................. 13

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4.8

Data Transfer............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

4.9

Service and User Performance Management ................................................................................................................................................................................ 14

4.10 Accessing the Underlying Infrastructure and Services ............................................................................................................................................................... 15

4.10.1 Database ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
4.10.2 Application Server .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 16
4.11 File Storage................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16
4.12 Assisted Software and Stack Updates .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 17

5 Public, Private and Hybrid deployments ......................................................................................................................... 17

6 Support and Service-Level Agreement ............................................................................................................................ 18
7 OutSystems Professional Services...................................................................................................................................... 19
7.1

Assessment and Advisory Cloud Services....................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

7.2

Migration Services .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19

7.3

Acceleration Services ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 20

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1 OutSystems Platform Overview

OutSystems Platform is an open application platform (PaaS) solution designed for public or private cloud, onpremises or hybrid deployments. It combines high productivity, full application lifecycle management, and the
capability to continuously change enterprise mobile and web applications that scale from small to large enterprise
installations with hundreds of thousands of users.
Applications developed on OutSystems Platform allow customers to immediately leverage the benefits of visually
generating standard Java or C# code that sits on top of standard middleware infrastructures, abstracting it away
from the developers and operations teams, while still adhering to standards that keep you from being locked into a
particular cloud provider.
Public Cloud - OutSystems Platform is available as a public cloud service, providing enterprise-class cloud
computing power.
Private Cloud - OutSystems Platform can reside in a private cloud provisioned by a third-party service provider or
within your data center.
On-Premises - Customers have the option to run OutSystems Platform as an on-premises solution.
Hybrid Customers can have some environments running in the public cloud and some running in their own
private cloud or datacenter. This way, application components can be designed and deployed across public, private
or on-premises environments, leveraging the unique benefits of each, based on the functional requirements of the
application.

1.1 Public Cloud

By using OutSystems Platform in the public cloud, your development teams are immediately enabled to design and
manage your applications. They avoid losing time and effort managing the infrastructure that supports them, as
OutSystems Platform automates DevOps practices, isolates all infrastructure management, provisioning, metering,
billing and application scaling in a simple-to-use offering.

Figure 1. Responsive application built with OutSystems Platform

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Some characteristics of OutSystems Platform running in our public cloud, either built-in or available as optional
services to which you can subscribe:

Runs over the Amazon Web Services (AWS) IaaS

Standardized for Java or .NET stacks over a MySQL, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database

Guaranteed service availability of, at least, 99.9%

Self-service provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and elastic scaling

VPN to your data center for easy and secure integration to existing systems

Daily backups and on-demand restore of production data

Continuous infrastructure monitoring

Controlled access to the underlying middleware

Access to cloud application development specialists to accelerate you on every step

Full-cloud or hybrid configurations - e.g. Development and Test in the cloud, Production on-premises or
vice-versa

2 OutSystems Platform Public Cloud Architecture

As you subscribe to OutSystems Platform, your infrastructure is automatically provisioned, configured and tuned for
high performance, security and reliability. This section describes the basic architectural principles that address these
non-functional requirements and how the OutSystems Platform solution is implemented.

2.1 Underlying Infrastructure Provider

OutSystems Platform physical infrastructure is hosted within
the secure data centers of Amazon Web Services.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader and most
mature public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). It has
enterprise-grade availability and it is the IaaS technology
which has been accredited under the largest number of
security compliance standards. See section AWS Security and
Compliance for more detailed information.

Figure 2. OutSystems is an AWS Technology Partner

However, the fact that OutSystems Platform runs on Amazon AWS doesnt mean we are locked into a single IaaS
vendor. OutSystems Platform internal architecture abstracts the IaaS layer, allowing portability between IaaS
vendors. See section Public, Private and Hybrid deployments for further information.

2.2 Starter Environment Configuration

OutSystems Platform starter configuration is composed of 1 Production environment and, depending on your
subscription, 1 or 2 Non-Production environments.

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Figure 3. Starter configuration with 2 Non-Production environments and 1 Production environment

Multiple environments allow you to develop and test your applications' functionality and integrations before
deploying to production or releasing them to customers. Additionally, this environment separation allows better
access control; less risk in development (making a mistake in a development database is different from making a
mistake in a production database); and, in scenarios where your applications have sensitive personal data, you
usually dont want your development and QA teams using this data in their tests.
The starter configuration is adequate for a team of up to 5 developers, on their usual daily work, and, in
Production, it is capable of serving up to ~30 requests per second, approximately 600 concurrent users
(benchmarked against a well-designed and scalable application).
Figure 4 depicts the physical architecture of the starter configuration.

Figure 4. Physical architecture of OutSystems Platform starter configuration

Development, Test, and Production Front-end Servers

Each Front-end Server is an isolated virtual instance with a set of resources well suited for developing and
running your OutSystems Platform mobile and web applications. Each Class 1 Front-end Server has 3.75 GB
(.NET stack) or 7.5 GB (Java stack) of memory, and 2 virtual cores, each roughly equivalent to a 2.8 GHz Intel
Xeon processor.

Management (Lifetime) Front-end Server

The Management Front-end Server is a virtual instance, isolated from the other environments, with 3.75 GB
of memory and 1 virtual core roughly equivalent to a 2.5 GHz Intel Xeon processor.

Database servers
Each Class 1 Database Server is a virtual relational database instance with 3.75 GB of memory, 1 virtual core
roughly equivalent to a 3.3 GHz Intel Xeon processor, and 100 GB of storage capacity.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

The VPC service provides a logically isolated private network for your OutSystems Platform environments.
This allows your cloud environments to communicate with your on-premises systems over an IPsec Virtual
Private Network (VPN) tunnel. This way you can leverage OutSystems Platform as a secure and seamless
extension to your data center. Refer to section Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and VPN for additional details.

If you need additional scalability or performance requirements, you can always scale your OutSystems Platform
infrastructure on demand. See section Vertical Scalability for additional details.
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The starter configuration also includes 200 GB/ month of outbound data transfer per environment. Usage above
this limit will be invoiced. Inbound data transfer is always free, in order to allow you migrate your data to the
cloud without worries. See section Data Transfer for additional details.

2.3 Supported Stack Configurations

OutSystems Platform allows you to choose your preferred SDK (JEE or .NET). Depending on your choice, your
applications will be generated using standard, optimized Java or C# code and deployed to the JBoss or Microsoft IIS
application servers. Contrary to other technologies, OutSystems Platform doesn't use a proprietary runtime engine.
All applications built with OutSystems Platform rely upon nothing but standard Java or .NET.
For the database engine, you can choose MySQL 5.6, Oracle 11gR2 or Microsoft SQL Server 2012. You can take full
advantage of their underlying capabilities, either by using OutSystems Platform visual query capabilities, or the
tools you already use today. See section Accessing the Underlying Infrastructure and Services for additional details.

Figure 5. Example OutSystems Platform Java and .NET configurations

Although OutSystems Platform visual modeling capabilities abstract the underlying stack and ensure portability
across stacks, the SDK you choose is relevant when developing OutSystems Platform Extensions. Integration Studio,
together with Eclipse or Visual Studio, allows you to:

Deploy your own existing Java or C# code and libraries to OutSystems Platform, in order to easily reuse
logic youve previously built.

Create Java or C# components that can use the full scope of the underlying JEE or .NET stacks. OutSystems
Platform automatically catalogs them and makes them available to other developers who can then use
them to visually assemble new applications.

Package integration adapters written in native languages and deploy them to OutSystems Platform. Once
deployed, these custom integration adapters become available as new visual building blocks you can use
in your applications.

This extensibility capability makes OutSystems Platform very flexible, allowing you to leverage your existing
development skills, while deploying code to the cloud, instead of having to comply with complex and custom
cloud-deployment containers. It is also a great benefit whenever you think about migrating from our public cloud
infrastructure to your own data center or to a different IaaS provider. This architecture will never lock you to a
particular cloud or deployment model.
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2.4 Infrastructure Geography

OutSystems gives you the freedom to deploy your application on a global infrastructure, physically distributed
around the globe. When subscribing to OutSystems Platform, you can choose the region you will be using. The
following five regions are available:

Asia Pacific Australia, Singapore, and Tokyo

Europe / Middle East / Africa Ireland

Americas United States

Whenever possible, consider locating your Platform instance in a region that reduces distance (and latency) in the
following scenarios:

On-premises integration performance: when you need to integrate your applications with legacy
services or applications hosted in your own data center. This becomes increasingly important if you plan to
engage in long term hybrid or on-premises to cloud scenarios.

Co-location with external cloud applications and services: in scenarios where you are already using
some of the AWS cloud services, youll have advantages in deploying OutSystems Platform in the same
region, to decrease communication latency and reduce data transfer costs on your other AWS
infrastructures.

Application performance to end users: you can provision resources closer to your end users, so they have
a better experience when running their applications, in case the users are concentrated in a single location.

Additionally, to meet legal requirements, you can select a region to ensure that your data resides only in the region
you specify.
Note: To choose the High Availability Database option when using a Microsoft SQL Server database, select either the European or
North American regions. The High Availability Database option for Microsoft SQL Server will be available to all regions in the future.

2.5 Infrastructure Multi-tenancy Isolation

Support for multi-tenancy is a basic aspect of platform as a service (PaaS) solutions the ability of the platform layer
to be able to host multiple customers (or tenants) in a resource-efficient but isolated manner.
In OutSystems Platform, multi-tenancy is provided by the underlying AWS IaaS, through virtual machines logically
isolated from other tenants (customers). At the database level the multi-tenancy is assured by the Amazon
Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) where each database instance operates logically isolated. Additionally,
for an extra layer of isolation, OutSystems prevents cross-tenant accesses, by making sure each tenant's front-ends
and database instances share a Virtual Private Cloud exclusive to the tenant.
This VPC isolation is preserved even when scaling the resources. A customer's OutSystems Platform infrastructure
can grow, to accommodate demand spikes or additional capacity, with no impact on other customers, and
OutSystems guarantees that the all additional resources will be part of the customers VPC. Refer to section Virtual
Private Cloud (VPC) and VPN for additional details.
Each customer's applications share the customer's common isolated set of environments, and are deployed
independently of each other, even though they share the same resources. The entire application portfolio shares
the same optimized infrastructure and scales evenly as new computing resources are added.

3 Security and Privacy

OutSystems applies security best practices and manages Platform security so customers can focus on their business.
OutSystems Platform inherently protects customers from threats by making sure security controls are applied at
every layer, from physical to application, and ensuring that customer applications and data are isolated.
We are willing to have our customers conduct security audits and penetration tests, as long as they are limited to
the customers cloud infrastructure.

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3.1 AWS Security and Compliance

OutSystems Platform physical infrastructure is hosted within Amazon Web Services secure and certified data
centers. Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers have multiple layers of operational and physical security to
ensure the integrity and safety of data. The data center is manned and supported 24x7x365. AWS system security
includes hardened and patched OS, secure, replicated databases, firewalls and VPN services, backup solutions,
intrusion detection devices, Distributed Denial-of-Services mitigation services and recurring risk assessments to
ensure compliance with industry standards.
Amazons data center operations have been accredited under several security compliance standards, such as ISO
27001, SOC 1/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402, SOC 2, SOC3, FedRAMPSM and FIPS 140-2.
For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security and https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/.

3.2 Application Security

Applications built with OutSystems Platform benefit from an extra level of security in the application code itself. For
example there are many common threats (such as SQL injection) that exploit vulnerabilities in the way programs are
written - OutSystems Platform generates standard .NET and Java code in a way that explicitly prevents these types
of threat. For an overview of the extensive set of built-in security features offered by OutSystems Platform, please
refer to the OutSystems Platform - Security Overview technical note.
Additionally, OutSystems systematically validates
the security of the code that is generated for both
web and mobile web applications. Using HP Fortify
Static Code Analyzer, the OutSystems R&D team
performs advanced vulnerability scanning on
OutSystems generated code during regression
testing, and has defined key acceptance criteria
regarding web security for all generated code to
eliminate all critical, high and medium
vulnerabilities.

Figure 6. OutSystems leverages HP Fortify

This gives you an extended security level regarding the code generated by the platform, and ultimately reduces the
cost of maintenance as new security issues are automatically fixed in customer applications.

3.3 Application Lifecycle Security

The security model that supports application lifecycle and promotion was tailored to support patterns of both
simple and complex software factories where there are several restrictions on who is allowed to stage which
application to which environment.
You can define IT teams responsibilities through Roles and specify what each Role can do in each environment. For
example, users with the Developer role might not be allowed to push applications to Production, while users with
the Operations role are.
Additionally, considering that each team usually works with a particular set of applications, for each role the
Platform lets you configure which specific applications can be accessed and if users can change them. This maps the
way organizations manage the security on their software factory, and simplifies the management of several
applications and teams of users.

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Figure 7. Easily define the level of access that should be provided to each role in your IT team

3.4 SSL/TLS Encryption

OutSystems Platform makes it as easy as possible for your applications to be secure and trusted for your users. You
can easily configure SSL/TLS certificates to provide end-to-end encryption between browsers and your applications,
which is crucial for applications that transmit sensitive data.

Figure 8. Easily enable SSL/TLS for your applications

To enable SSL/TLS on an OutSystems Platform environment you should associate the environment's address (single
frontend IP address or the Load Balancer address, both available in the management console) to your preferred
domain name and purchase an SSL certificate securing that domain. By requesting this configuration, using the
appropriate option in the management console, OutSystems Platform enables HTTPS to all your applications in that
environment, by configuring the underlying Application Server to use your certificate. No need for specific HTTPS
programming and testing headaches.

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3.5 Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and VPNs

The VPC service provides a secure and seamless bridge between your existing IT infrastructure and your OutSystems
Platform environments. With this technology, you can have your cloud environments communicate with your onpremises systems through VPN tunnels and vice-versa, enabling you to integrate and expose your core system
information in a secure way.
Additionally, you can have your organization access the cloud through VPN by
defining the routing and updating your security policies; meaning security
services and policies such as DNS, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems
apply seamlessly. This way you can leverage OutSystems Platform as an
extension of your corporate data center, without having to sacrifice security or
change your management practices.
VPN connections use industry-standard IPsec tunnel mode (with IKE-PSK, AES128, HMAC-SHA-1, PFS) to authenticate the two sides of the VPN connection
and to protect the data in transit from eavesdropping and tampering. IPsec
adds minimal overhead to the traffic stream - encryption and encapsulation
add about 7% additional bandwidth utilization. Most network interface cards
now offload encryption functions to a specialized processor, so the
performance of the VPN shouldnt be affected.

Figure 9. Easily request the VPN service

You can subscribe to additional VPNs, for example to connect to multiple geographic locations or to create a
redundant VPN connection to provide failover.

4 OutSystems Platform Public Cloud Services

OutSystems Platform abstracts infrastructure management, provisioning, metering and billing in a simple to use
offering. This section describes the services specific to the public cloud offering of OutSystems Platform.

4.1 Additional Environments for Elastic Release Management

You can subscribe to additional environments, at any time, for greater flexibility over your development lifecycle.
The starter configuration of OutSystems Platform is composed of 1 Production environment and, depending on
your subscription, 1 or 2 Non-Production environments. However, your infrastructure can comprise of any number
of environments. You might need additional environments to comply with your governance policies, such as:
User Acceptance Testing environment, separated from your Test
environment. This allows your users to verify if your applications meet
their requirements, in an environment isolated from where your QA
Team conduct their unit, integration and system testing phases

Demonstration/ Training environment

Load/ Performance Testing environment, where you perform

load and performance tests periodically
Staging/ Pre-Production environment, where you can have a
replica of your Production database, in order to simulate as much of
the Production environment as possible
The addition of an environment to your infrastructure has no impact
on your running applications. This operation automatically provisions
a new environment in the Platform, allowing you to deploy your
applications and monitor their performance and errors.
Additional Production environments include one front-end server
and one dedicated database server. Additional Non-Production
environments include one front-end server and share the same
database server as the remaining Non-Production environments.
Figure 10. Self-service addition of a new environment
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4.2 Horizontal Scalability

OutSystems Platform allows you to add additional front-end servers to any Production environment, for high
scalability and high availability.
With one click, OutSystems Platform automatically deploys additional front-end servers in a farm configuration and
automatically syncs the applications of the Environment to the new front-end server. All front-end servers in the
farm will log to the same centralized repository in order to allow for efficient monitoring and troubleshooting in
Service Center.
A load balancer automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple front-end servers to spread
request load. It also detects unhealthy front-end servers within your Production Environment and automatically
reroutes traffic to healthy instances until the unhealthy instances have been restored, increasing the fault tolerance
of your applications.

Figure 11. A load balancer automatically distributes incoming application traffic

4.3 Vertical Scalability

With OutSystems Platform you can seamlessly scale the computing power of your front-ends and databases. This
allows you to:

Better support your developers, as your team grows;

Temporarily increase the computing power of your front-ends, in order to finish processing computationintensive jobs;

Enhance the processing power of the database, in order to handle increasing load, as your application
portfolio grows.

The following options are available:

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Front-end Servers
.NET stack

Class 1
Class 2
Class 3

Java stack

2 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

4 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

3.75 GB of memory

7.5 GB of memory

4 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

8 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

7.5 GB of memory

15 GB of memory

8 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

16 Virtual Cores (2.8 GHz each)

15 GB of memory

30 GB of memory

Database Servers

Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5

1 Virtual Core (3.3 GHz)

3.75 GB of memory
2 Virtual Cores (3.5 GHz each)
7.5 GB of memory
4 Virtual Cores (3.5 GHz each)
15 GB of memory
4 Virtual Cores (3.5 GHz each)
34 GB of memory
8 Virtual Cores (3.5 GHz each)
68 GB of memory

Front-end Servers of the same class differ between stacks due to higher system requirements in the Java version of
OutSystems Platform. But you can expect similar responsiveness between stacks, for front-ends of the same class.

4.4 Database Storage

With OutSystems Platform you can scale the storage resources of your database as you grow. No need to make a
huge investment upfront or plan costly database migrations, when your data is close to reach the database limit.
In the Platform you can easily allocate additional database storage capacity, while maintaining the availability of
your database. There will be minimal impact in your running applications.

4.5 Database Backup and Restore

All database data is backed up daily and maintained for 15 days. These backups allow us to recover your databases
to any point in time 15 days back.

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From the backups, OutSystems is able to recover all your applications source versions, all configurations and
application runtime data. Front-end server local file system is not backed up.
A database restore is an operation requested in the management console and will be scheduled and done in
agreement with customers.

4.6 High Availability Database

To make your Production database even more resilient to unplanned failures, and hence more highly available,
OutSystems Platform offers a High availability configuration for your Production database.
In this configuration, your Production database instance has a standby replica in a different Availability Zone (see
Figure 12). Database updates are made concurrently on the primary and standby databases to prevent replication
lag. In the event of a Database Instance failure, planned database maintenance, or an Availability Zone failure, the
Platform will automatically failover to the up-to-date standby so that database operations can resume quickly
without administrative intervention. (Notice that prior to failover, it is not possible to directly access the standby
database, nor can it be used to serve read traffic.)
Note: To choose the High Availability Database option when using a Microsoft SQL Server database, select either the European or North
American regions. The High Availability Database option for Microsoft SQL Server will be available to all regions in the future.

Figure 12. Production database with High Availability configuration

4.7 High Availability Configuration and Disaster Recovery

OutSystems Platform helps you solve availability, disaster recovery, and other critical operational headaches faster.
It does this by automating much of the hard, complex work associated with disaster recovery and continuous
availability solutions.
OutSystems offers a High Availability configuration that guarantees high availability and reliability to your
Production environment, through the following two mechanisms:
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Fault-tolerant Front-ends: by using the Horizontal Scalability service, OutSystems places additional frontends in separate and isolated Availability Zones (but always in the region you specify). This has no
performance impact on your applications, since all Availability Zones in the same region are connected
through special low-latency links. In the rare scenario of a data center disaster or failure, this implies that
the availability of your other front-end servers wont be affected.

Database Replica: under the High Availability configuration, your Production database instance has a
standby replica in a different Availability Zone. In the event of a Database Instance failure, planned
database maintenance, or an Availability Zone failure, the Platform will automatically failover to the up-todate standby so that database operations can resume quickly. See the High Availability Database section
for additional information.

4.8 Data Transfer

Data transfer is the amount of digital information that moves from your OutSystems Platform infrastructure to other
systems or your users devices, and vice-versa. Your OutSystems Platform subscription includes 200 GB/ month of
free outbound data transfer per front-end. For instance, if your Production environment has 3 front-ends, youll be
entitled to 600 GB/ month of outbound data transfer.
If you need more than the 200 GB/ month of outbound data transfer included in your subscription, for instance due
to a very large user base or if your applications are rich in multimedia content, you will be charged for each
additional 100 GB of outbound data transfer.
Inbound data transfer is always free. This means you dont have to worry if your applications involve large
amounts of incoming data (e.g. consumption of webservices).

4.9 Service and User Performance Management

In OutSystems, system administrators, operation teams and developers can manage, monitor, and troubleshoot
your application portfolio, in real time.
All applications and services developed with OutSystems Platform benefit from built-in instrumentation that
provides a wealth of information about application health, ranging from consolidated error logging and analytic
reports on application performance, to web page, web services and database query performance metrics.
Furthermore, OutSystems Platform also monitors the performance of all applications deployed, from the point of
view of the end-users. Using an industry standard indicator of user satisfaction, the Application Performance Index,
the Platform measures the performance that counts: the time from the moment a user clicks a link until the moment
the page finishes loading. No more looking at system specific metrics, such as CPU or Memory usage levels, that
provide no insight into the real user experience.
You can drill down to the screen level and assess the performance across time to understand that a simple change
in the homepage of an application was having a significant impact on the experience of your users; understand if
applications are degrading in performance as usage grows, or if your system is ready to handle increasing demand.
And since all monitoring operations are performed asynchronously, your clients won't notice any performance
impact.

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Figure 13. User Performance Monitoring using OutSystems Platform

4.10 Accessing the Underlying Infrastructure and Services

OutSystems Platform abstracts you from the underlying infrastructure for all operations. Nevertheless, in enterprise
applications, we believe you should have as much control as possible. The Platform is designed not to be a blackbox where you have no visibility and control over what goes under the covers. Instead, it simplifies all operations,
while still providing you several extension points and control options over the underlying infrastructure.
When you install the Platform on-premises, it sits on top of your preferred Application Server and DBMS. Your IT
team controls the entire underlying infrastructure and defines its own policies and processes to access it.
When using OutSystems Platform in our public cloud, we manage your environments to guarantee their availability,
but you still have the flexibility to do many of the operations you might want to do with your on-premises
installations, like running queries directly on the database. Other options may require involving OutSystems (such
as installing SSL certificates). And some are not possible at all because they could affect your PaaS experience (such
as writing to OutSystems Platform internal tables and views), or could break automatic elasticity (such as installing
custom software components in the machines where the Platform is running). Note that integrations that would
require installing custom software in the servers can be achieved by importing the relevant libraries into an
OutSystems Extension.
The following sections indicate the resources you have access to in our public cloud.

4.10.1 Database
The core of a business application is its data. Most data related operations - such as modeling, deploying changes,
optimizing via indexes, querying/ updating data, and testing your queries - are provided by OutSystems Platform in
its visual modeling environment. You can also integrate with external databases and, if needed, use the Platforms
Advanced Query feature to write complex SQL statements. You will seldom find the need to access the database
directly. But, if you do, you can use your favorite database clients, such as TOAD, Oracle SQL Developer, or Microsoft
SQL Server Management Studio, to directly access your applications database to perform operations such as:

Read or Write data in bulk to your application tables e.g. deleting data in a development table

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Create and run database specific Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) processes to load data from files or
external data sources - e.g. to extract and load Production data to the Test environment

Read data of the Platform metamodel. This can be helpful in advanced scenarios.

We do however protect you from making changes that could affect the health of your PaaS. In that matter, we
restrict you from writing or changing the Platforms internal tables and views; from manipulating the structure of
database objects (tables / views / indexes / etc.) and from creating database logic (such as functions, views,
procedures, etc.) directly in the cloud database.

4.10.2 Application Server

Customer infrastructure is automatically provisioned, abstracted, and managed. To ensure optimum performance
and reliability of the environments, there is no direct access to the servers through remote access or Telnet.
However, extensibility mechanisms are built into OutSystems Platform to allow you explore the several native
services provided by the underlying infrastructure:

Use Extensions created in Integration Studio, together with Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio, to write
native Java or C# code that is deployed, runs and is monitored as part of your application. This code can
reuse local services and the entire scope of the JEE or .NET frameworks.

You can request access to a folder in the local file system of your environments, allowing you to create and
access files from your applications:
o

This folder is specific to each frontend server. It cannot be accessed from another front-end in your
PaaS.

Your applications can have access to the local folder in each front-end by using the Filesystem
extension. Direct access to the file system (e.g. using FTP or similar protocol) is not allowed.

The main use cases for using this folder are:

Uploading large files with seed data that your applications use

Store temporary application files

Use as a destination folder of third party libraries that require reading or writing to the file
system

This folder is not backed up by OutSystems at any point in time. If you wish to store files
persistently, you should use other options (see section File Storage).

Configuration of low-level runtime settings (such as HttpRuntime parameters or custom handlers) can be
achieved by deploying the Service Center Factory Configuration component.

4.11 File Storage

When designing applications to run in OutSystems Platform, you might need your applications to manipulate large
binary files - e.g. if your applications allow storing documents, or if the business processes you design have a step
where users need to upload attachments. There are two major strategies for data storage:

Using the database to store large binary objects.

OutSystems Platform allows you to store BLOBs (binary objects) in the data model. This is designed visually
in your applications and accessed via the built-in capabilities of the Platform. This is the perfect scenario for
the kind of files you would consider storing in a relational database. Since OutSystems backs the database
up for you, your files are instantly secured.

Using a component to integrate with an external file storage services.

When using an online file storage service you can benefit from the scalability, reliability and performance of
full-blown cloud storage, enabling you to store files with several terabytes. You can integrate with these
services by creating your own Extensions or reusing components already available in the OutSystems
Forge.

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For instance, if you choose the Amazon S3 file storage service, you can use this Amazon S3 component,
built by a member of the OutSystems community. This component encapsulates the Amazon S3 API in an
Extension that you can easily reuse as a visual building block in your applications.
This is a good option when you dont want to fill your database with large amounts of binary information
that might create unnecessary (store and retrieve) load on the application server and database.
Even though OutSystems is running on Amazon, the S3 service should be acquired directly from Amazon,
should you wish to use it.

4.12 Assisted Software and Stack Updates

OutSystems releases product updates with new features and defect fixes on a regular basis.
When updating your on-premises OutSystems Platform installation there are two scenarios you must consider:

Applying a maintenance update: in this scenario you have to install the update on each of your front-end
servers and refresh your applications code to incorporate the corrections and improvements of the new
software version.

Applying a major version update: in this scenario, in addition to updating your front-end servers and
refreshing your applications, you must review the breaking changes checklist and, if needed, modernize
and test your applications.
Notice that, in some cases, your underlying infrastructure - e.g. Operating System, Database version or
Framework - might need to be updated as well, to ensure your applications keep running on top of a stateof-the-art stack.

OutSystems takes care of the installation of new updates/stacks in all your environments and databases. Customers
only have to update their applications (or request an Application Upgrade service to OutSystems or one of its
partners).
As software updates can have impact on your running applications, these interventions are always scheduled and
agreed upon by OutSystems and the customer, to ensure coordination and minimal business impact.

5 Public, Private and Hybrid deployments

OutSystems Platform is available as a public cloud service. Customers also have alternative deployment options:

Private Cloud OutSystems Platform can reside in a private cloud provisioned by a third-party service
provider or in a private cloud within your data center.

On-Premises customers have the option to run OutSystems Platform as an on-premises solution.

Hybrid consists of mixing the public and private cloud models by having some environments running in
the public cloud and some running in your own private cloud or datacenter.

In a hybrid deployment, OutSystems Platform abstracts the environments physical location and makes them
centrally manageable. The Platform and your environments are still able to communicate securely, either via SSL or
via an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Common scenarios for a hybrid deployment are:

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Non-Production environments in the cloud, Production environment in your data center.

Gives you the ability to start your project immediately, but keep control over sensitive production
data or underlying physical architecture and operations.

Production in the cloud, Non-Production environments in your datacenter.

You already have your own virtualization environment setup to support Development and Test,
but want to benefit from the cloud elasticity and/or high availability for deploying your
applications.

Two Production environments, one in the cloud and one in your datacenter.

Public facing applications deployed in the cloud Production environment. Internal use
applications deployed in your datacenter. (Additional Production environments are optional.)

On-premises environment used as a caching service for legacy systems. The cloud environments
integrate with this replica environment, avoiding having to access the legacy system all the time.

In Figure 14 you can see a screenshot depicting an infrastructure with two environments deployed in the cloud
(Development and Quality) and two environments deployed on-premises (Pre-Production and Production).

Figure 14. Infrastructure with two environments deployed in the cloud and two environments deployed on-premises

6 Support and Service-Level Agreement

For a detailed description of Support Levels and OutSystems Platform Service Level Agreement, please refer to the
Support and Software Update Services technical note.

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7 OutSystems Professional Services

To support the on-boarding and off-boarding processes, OutSystems provides the set of optional Professional
Services described below.

7.1 Assessment and Advisory Cloud Services

With Assessment and Advisory Cloud Services, OutSystems Expert Consultants will help the customer organization
prepare for and manage a future transition to OutSystems platform as a service (PaaS) solution designed for private
cloud, public or hybrid cloud.
OutSystems Expert Team will work closely with the customer stakeholders to assess the business requirements and
prepare a roadmap plan ensuring a smooth transition.
During this assessment, the OutSystems Expert Consultants will work towards recommending a Solution
Architecture addressing the following topics:

Assess current architecture and integration needs

Identify customer business needs, technical and operational requirements

Identify requirements to integrate the new solution with existing infrastructure

Advise on the cloud scenario that best fits customer requirements: private, public or hybrid

Assist in private cloud, public or hybrid configurations

Assist in cloud infrastructure capacity planning

At the end of the Assessment, a Roadmap Plan fully adapted to the customers scenario will be presented including
next steps and best practices recommendations. This plan will provide the following information:

Infrastructure architecture plan

Application building or migration plan

Cloud best practices recommendations

7.2 Migration Services

Migration Services support the customer organization to move from an on-premises OutSystems Platform
infrastructure to OutSystems platform as a service (PaaS) solution. This will allow the customer to benefit from all
cloud advantages such as infrastructure reliability, hardware scalability and fast provisioning.
During this Migration, OutSystems Expert Consultants will work towards delivering the following items:

Implement a defined Solution Architecture

In hybrid configurations, when needed, implement applications refactoring

Migrate data and applications to the cloud

Monitor applications to ensure agreed performance levels after migration procedures

Coach customer IT team in cloud management tasks, if required

At the end of the Migration Service, your OutSystems application portfolio will be running in the cloud with minimal
impact on your business operation. This service will ensure you:

All your OutSystems application portfolio is fully operational in the cloud

Knowledge transfer of cloud managed services when required

Cloud Best Practices recommendations

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These services can also be used for the off-boarding processes, in which customers want to move their application
portfolio to their own private cloud or on-premises data center. These services complement the full commitment of
OutSystems Platform to no lock-in.
Discontinuation policies are provided for each version of the platform, and if you ever choose to terminate your
subscription a full detachment and off-boarding process is documented and supported, allowing you to keep your
data (in the form of a standard MySQL, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database backup file), and applications
generated source code.

7.3 Acceleration Services

The OutSystems Acceleration Program is an intensive one-month on-site program designed for organizations that
want to go fast towards full technical autonomy with OutSystems Platform.
A fully dedicated OutSystems Acceleration Consultant will work closely with the team to assess existing skills and
prepare a plan to ensure a smooth learning experience. Done in the context of a project you choose, this
Acceleration Program stage ends with a customized checkpoint report.
During this highly focused period, the Acceleration Consultant will work towards your autonomy by addressing the
following topics:

Implementation best practices for building great applications

Reusable OutSystems architectures for maximum reutilization and proper architecture growth

Effective Business Process Technology usage to support process activities

Integration strategy and approach to handle third party SaaS, cloud or on-premises systems

Developing mobile interfaces in sync with web interfaces

Designing highly usable user interfaces leveraging OutSystems Platform

At the end of the Acceleration Service, a checkpoint report fully adapted to your case is presented with next steps
and recommendations. This report provides you with an assessment of your team towards your own autonomy
including:

OutSystems Platform skill assessment for your team

Potential improvement areas

Next recommended Acceleration Program steps Community support, technical assurance, or continued
acceleration

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