IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V4.2

Last week IBM announced CICS TS for z/OS V4.2 : 'IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS , V4.2, further reinforces competitiveness, compliance, and control (ZP11-0104)'. I'll just give you a few quotes to give you an idea of the announcement. The first quote is from the announcement itself.

"CICS TS V4.2 builds upon the new and enhanced capabilities developed and delivered in CICS TS V4.1 to enable users to compete in the marketplace, comply with standards and regulations, and control their business".

The second quote is from the CICS Portfolio eNewsLetter which was issued on April 5, 2011 and it gives a summary of the main domains where CICS TS V4.2 is delivering innovations.

"CICS TS V4.2 delivers technical innovation and significant business value in the following five main focus areas:

• Event processing is extended with new system events that give you real-time feedback of potential problems, and new life-cycle support to make events easier to manage
• Java improvements include a new 64bit multi-threaded JVM server environment built on the OSGi model for higher scalability and easier application management, and a new Axis2-based Java web services stack enabling zAAP offload
• Connectivity using IPIC is extended to cover function shipping of File Control, Temporary Storage, and Transient Data requests to take you a step closer to an IP-only environment, and HTTP improvements can help to improve performance
• Management improvements include a new transaction tracking capability to speed problem determination, new CICSPlex SM workload management algorithms to give more control over workload distribution, new support for password phrases up to 100 characters, along with many CICS Explorer enhancements
• Scalability of CICS is enhanced with new threadsafe support for IMSDB and function shipping mirrors when using IPIC, plus new 64-bit exploitation by Trace and Temporary Storage, helping to improve throughput and performance"

This eNewsLetter is really worth a look. You can subscribe to it over here. The April version is over here. And if you go one level up, you'll also find the previous versions.

This CICS TS V4.2 requires z/OS 1.11 and it becomes available June 24, 2011. If you want to test it earlier you can subscribe to the beta version. There's more information on the IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V4.2 page. You can find more information on the Open Beta over here.

One final remark I also pick up from the eNewsLetter : since there will be a price increase for CICS TS V3 bringing prices close to those of CICS TS V4 (cf. my post over here), price may no longer be a reason to stay much longer on CICS TS V3.