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IBM CICS Transaction Server

Score8.7 out of 10

17 Reviews and Ratings

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What is IBM CICS Transaction Server?

IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is mixed-language application server that runs on IBM z/OS. CICS® Transaction Server, often called CICS, is used for hosting transactional enterprise applications in a hybrid architecture.

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Categories & Use Cases

IBM CICS Transaction Server Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features IBM CICS Transaction Server has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 17 ratings of IBM CICS Transaction Server's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Application server performance

    Speed of deploy time, initialization time and other performance metrics

    Category average: 8.6

  • Security management

    Integrated security management for applications

    Category average: 8.5

  • Administration and management

    Ease of management via administration console

    Category average: 7.8

Areas for Improvement

  • Installation

    Ease of download and installation

    Category average: 8.5

  • Open-source standards compliance

    Support for open-source standards like J2EE

    Category average: 8.4

  • IDE support

    Support for a number of different programming environments or IDEs

    Category average: 7.4

Who Buys & Uses IBM CICS Transaction Server

IBM CICS Transaction Server Reviews

What users are saying about IBM CICS Transaction Server.
View all IBM CICS Transaction Server reviews

Good product to handle daily transactions

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

CICS TS is used for online transactions in bank and insurance applications. More than 600 millions of transactions by day. All are configured with CPSM. This product is robust and is able to support workload and high availability. Each new release brings evolution and new functionnalites. Last versions do focus on security.

Pros

  • Handle heavy workload
  • Support high availability
  • Offer a lot of security fonctionnalities
  • High level of availability

Cons

  • Integration in CICS Exlorer of all WUI functions
  • More tools to do problem determination in case of CPSM problem
  • Better integration of parameters in SIT instead toggle and so on

Return on Investment

  • Small customer team to administer product
  • Best support from IBM. Somrtimes, it could take along time to get a solution.
  • Integration of new technologies on new versions

Usability

Alternatives Considered

IBM IMS

Other Software Used

BMC AMI Ops, IBM MQ, IBM Db2 Big SQL

CICS World class transaction server

Incentivized
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We still have many of our old code written using COBOL CICS that takes the data from the OnPremise system location that get sent to IBM Mainframe and need to get updated. IBM CICS Transaction Server help us update that data on the IBM Mainframe. We don't have to rewrite any of our previous logic to do these updates and we can do code reuse.

Pros

  • It helps us modernize our legacy mainframe based applications by moving the newer logic to modern platform while keeping enterprise corporate systems running
  • It works well and is stable without any issues
  • It is very secured and you rarely hear of any data breaches due to this

Cons

  • Would like to see the transaction response matrix on the average transaction response among all requests.
  • Would like to see GUI tool to be able to see currently running transactions
  • Would like to be able to get the details of where the cics transaction was triggered from

Return on Investment

  • It has allowed us to use our decades old code and still continue to support the business
  • Allows us to have faster time to market and modernize our systems
  • We can still continue to use our legacy resources for modern systems

Alternatives Considered

Db2

Other Software Used

Db2, Oracle Java SE, IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition

My life with CICS

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • De facto standard in the legacy enterprise
  • Multiplatform connection
  • Native connection with DB2

Cons

  • Direct internet connection
  • Social connectors
  • Speak Java not only with Websphere

Return on Investment

  • More scalability than servers
  • More reliability than servers
  • More security

Alternatives Considered

IMS

Other Software Used

DB2, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON, IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager