A STILLWATER, OKLA.-BASED startup, Hostbridge Technology, is poised to release a product on Monday that lets customers XML-enable CICS transactions.

   ADVERTISEMENT
  

Free IT resource

Hear how top CIOs turn change into a competitive advantage.

Sponsored by HP

Free IT resource

Try Sun servers, workstations and storage products free for 60-days.

Sponsored by Sun Microsystems

RELATED LINKS
»  Google delivers ad-supported video clips via AdSense
»  3Com waiting for details of Bain/Huawei acquisition bid
»  Indian outsourcers' U.S. shopping spree
»  Business RSS feed 

IDG ENTERPRISE NETWORK
• The Broader the E-Biz, the Bigger the Lawsuit  (CIO)
• Time To Change  (CIO)

TOP NEWS 


IT SOLUTION SEARCH
According to market research firm IDC, in Framingham, Mass., CICS comprises the most common category of host-based e-business transactions within an IBM enterprise server environment. Furthermore, these still power 80 percent of the world's mission-critical financial and other banking applications.

The product, which takes the company's name, Hostbridge, runs on the mainframe under CICS. By virtue of the CICS interface, it can handle all transactions before the 3270 data stream starts, generates the transactions as XML, then spits them out to a middle-tier server that understands XML, such as IBM's WebSphere or BEA Systems' WebLogic.

As a product, Hostbridge differentiates itself from other Web-to-host software in that there is no screen-scraping involved.

"The CICS transaction does not change; nothing changes on the host," said Russ Tuebner, founder of Hostbridge.

An IDC report written by analyst Sally Cusack stated that this gives customers a simpler means to integrate CICS data into e-business applications.

Screenscraping, on the other hand, is limited in its fragility and lack of flexibility.

Down the road, Hostbridge plans to market the product more broadly.

"One of the ways we'll promote the product in the future is as a BizTalk connector to CICS," Tuebner said.

The product starts at $32,000.