Analyst Report: IDC

International Data Corporation

HostBridge: Bridging the Web Gap for CICS BMS Applications

Sally Cusack
IDC IDCFlash #23906 - January 2001

IDC Opinion

What makes HostBridge a unique alternative to Web-to-host software solutions?

HostBridge is host-based software for the IBM S/390 and zSeries marketplace. It allows IT shops that utilize Customer Information Control System (CICS) basic mapping support (BMS) in these environments to securely invoke IBM CICS transactions via a standard HTTP request. The output is then delivered in standard XML format -- not as a 3270 screen, which is more commonly found in traditional Web-to-host software products.

Company Profile

HostBridge Technology is based in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Founded in spring 2000, the privately held company has five employees.

The vendor recently announced a software product that is also called HostBridge. HostBridge is host-based software for IBM S/390 and zSeries customers with an ongoing investment in CICS applications. Russ Teubner, a pioneer in the development of legacy integration software, founded HostBridge. Teubner's previous products (Faxgate, Corridor, and A-Net) were groundbreaking in their markets. (Esker now owns these products.)

Product Overview

HostBridge was officially announced in January 2001. The primary differentiator that sets the software apart from many Web-to-host solutions on the market is that no screen scraping is involved. This should give customers an easier path for integrating CICS data into newer ebusiness applications in a highly scalable fashion.

HostBridge is built on the foundation of CICS Web Support and 3270 Bridge. CICS Web Support and 3270 Bridge are features that IBM recently added to CICS Transaction Server.

HostBridge is compatible with any middle-tier application server that can send an HTTP request and receive an XML document. This includes IBM's WebSphere, BEA's WebLogic, and SilverStream's Application Server. HostBridge also complements the broad range of evolving middleware technologies based on XML, including Microsoft's BizTalk and SilverStream's xCommerce. This makes it an attractive partner for many middle-tier application server vendors looking to strengthen or extend their legacy connectivity solutions (see Figure 1).

Market Opportunity

IT enterprises have typically extended their CICS transactions to the Web using Web-to-host products that rely on terminal emulation, screen scraping techniques, and proprietary development tools or scripting languages. HostBridge drastically reduces the complexity of integration middle-tier applications with CICS.

Figure 1 - HostBridge and Middle-Tier Web-to-Host Solutions

Components involved in a typical middle-tier Web-to-host solution

Because of their complexity and reliance upon screen scraping, Web-to-Host gateways are difficult to implement, scale poorly and break easily.

Components involved in the HostBridge solution:

By eliminating the use of 3270 data streams and screen scraping, the HostBridge solution is easy to implement and creates a more scalable and stable environment.

Source: IDC, 2001

As these corporations make the transition from traditional glass house, brick-and-mortar enterprises to the Internet-enabled ebusiness world, they must provide their employees, partners, and customers with access to this mainframe resident data via intranets and extranets as well as the Internet.

Legacy extension solutions have been available for several years, but many of the products rely on screen scraping techniques. This screen-scraper-on-steroids approach has limitations. The biggest is the inability to scale in distributed environments with increasing platform heterogeneity.

This fragility occurs most often in Web-to-host software solutions composed of many layered components that have a proclivity to snap when the host application changes. In an effort to avoid this scenario, HostBridge creates a platform-neutral, XML pathway from CICS transactions to middle-tier application servers without employing screen scraping techniques.

Conclusion

The most prevalent category of host-based ebusiness transactions within an IBM enterprise server environment is CICS-based transactions. These still power 80% of the world's mission-critical financial and other banking applications.

The ability to provide Web-to-host capability for these transactions and to implement a platform-neutral XML pathway should appeal strongly to organizations looking to quickly and easily accomplish this goal.

Products such as HostBridge can save organizations time and money by allowing them to utilize and leverage in-house resources and proven technology while moving to the next-generation ebusiness environment.