IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - July/August 2016 - 50

TECH CORNER | OVERVIEW

Middleware INNOVATION
The latest CICS and IMS updates place z Systems at the center of the API economy

T

wenty years ago, people needing banking services would go to
a brick-and-mortar location. Today, they're just as likely to use a
smartphone (pewrsr.ch/1Wtg5Nl). They can apply for a mortgage by
tapping their tablet and may very well skip driving to a physical store in favor
of scrolling down a mobile device to buy everything from clothing and cars to
music and mocha lattes. The way we navigate the world has changed, and
the economy has changed with it.
Kristin Lewotsky
is a freelance
technology writer
based in Amherst,
New Hampshire.

Previously, those transactions
probably would have gone through
a mainframe running IBM's CICS*
or IMS* middleware. Today, those
organizations are still likely to use
a mainframe running CICS or IMS-
23 of the world's top 25 banks
run IBM z Systems*, as do the 10
largest insurance companies and
18 of the top 25 retailers. Over the
past two decades, the mainframe
has vaulted ahead performancewise, with recent benchmarks
for CICS and IMS at well over
100,000 transactions per second
(see "Transaction Benchmarks,"
page 52). That kind of performance
is important, given that analysts
predict anywhere from 20 billion to
over 50 billion connected devices
by 2020.
CICS and IMS have changed in
other ways as well. While boosting
performance in the traditional
usage areas, CICS Transaction
Server (TS) for z/OS* V5.3 and
IMS 14 also continue the strategic
push to target functionality
demanded by customers. They
leverage z/OS Connect to provide
a secure channel to the mainframe
for external and internal apps.
As a result, a company can just

50 // JULY/AUGUST 2016 ibmsystemsmag.com

as easily create a mobile portal to
sell consumers the smartphones
it manufactures as it can build
a mobile warehouse-monitoring
system that enables its employees
to manage that inventory.

Competing in
a Mobile World
In 2014, mobile payments hit a
tipping point, exceeding visits
on desktops and laptops for
the first time, according to the
Branding Brand Mobile Commerce
Index (bit.ly/1TFgTZi). Analysts
expect mobile payments to
reach $620 billion worldwide in
2016, according to TrendForce
(bit.ly/1Tb11DG). That's a lot of
mobile apps with many companies
and developers trying to build
and deploy them in a hurry.
Fortunately, the web hasn't just
changed how we buy; it's changed
how we program.
In the past, developers writing
mobile shopping applications,
for example, would also be
responsible for building the
payment system that captured
customer credit card data and
interfaced with the banks. Today,
they only must worry about

creating a product and UI that
engage customers and deliver
valuable new services. They can
build their payment system in a
snap by leveraging pre-existing
applications, or microservices,
hosted on the web by an
application server. The developer
calls those APIs from his app, and
the application server hosts the
rest of the transaction. He only
must know the rules of the API and
the few lines of code required to
call the application.
Here is where things get
interesting: Anyone can develop
an application server and API.
A bank wanting to build an
ecosystem of merchant partners
could offer APIs for payment
systems, loan applications, etc. A
hotel partner might leverage the
payment API for a mobile checkin app, while a car-shopping app
could enable users to apply for
a loan while they're standing on
the lot. APIs and the application
servers that host them streamline
the job of developers.
"We see a move to provisioning
things in a microservices or
cloud style," says Fraser Bohm,
chief architect for CICS. "With
http://www.pewrsr.ch/1Wtg5Nl http://www.bit.ly/1TFgTZi http://www.bit.ly/1Tb11DG http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com
IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - July/August 2016

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