New CICS products from IBM will enable customers to more easily integrate business processes and transform their existing applications to those that fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a 35-year-old technology that makes it possible for enterprises such as banks and retailers to process millions of transactions (mostly credit-card transactions) per day. The new software is aimed at systems that account for more than $1 trillion of transactions each day.

IBM today announced the release of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1, which includes Web services support that extends CICS applications to an SOA and provides support for the SSL security protocol. An optimized CICS data exchange capability and the ability to use a single development tool (WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer) provides enhanced application transformation capabilities, according to the company. Also, the product offers improved performance and system management through the extension of the CICSPlex System Manager Web User Interface, improved workload throughput, and enhanced C/C++ program performance.

"The latest version of CICS Transaction server continues the path of IBM's investment in the mainframe infrastructure and joins with the latest versions of Web Sphere, DB2, and IMS, enabling companies to deploy Web Services and participate in SOA," said Dibbe Edwards, director of CICS Products at IBM, in a statement.

IBM also announced CICS Transaction Gateway V6.0, which enables tightly coupled technologies such as the Java Connector Architecture and loosely coupled Web services to coexist and exploit the agility of an on-demand operating environment, according to IBM. The enhanced gateway provides enhanced performance and scalability, and improved systems management and security, including more functional and integrated administration interfaces and enhanced SSL support.

The CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1 will be available in the first quarter of 2005. CICS Transaction Gateway V6.0 will be available in December 2005.