When enterprises include CICS programs as part of integrated, hybrid applications, they care very deeply about performance and reliability. Mainframe applications are known for high availability, reliability and sub-second response time. These characteristics are often the reasons why enterprises continue to run their businesses with mainframe applications. Technology to create high performing CICS integrations is a prerequisite to the success of these hybrid applications.

Today’s hybrid applications often run in the cloud and facilitate user or customer access through mobile devices or browsers. They present easy-to-use, graphical interfaces that look nothing like the 3270 green screens of old. In the background, CICS applications often house the business logic and data on which these hybrid applications are built. Critical to the success of these hybrid applications is robust integration technology. Ideally, it enables rather than hinders the performance and reliability of the backend CICS applications.

When screen scraping is the integration approach to CICS applications, the price IT organizations pay is performance, reliability, or both. It isn’t just us that says this: The Open Banking Hub articulates the problems with screen scraping in “Screen scraping 101: Who, What, Where, and When?” Of course, the HostBridge team has much to say about the perils of screen scraping, and the advantages of API versus UI-based integration.

Customer Benchmark Data

The advantages of APIs for high performing CICS integrations include superior performance and reliability. Benchmark data from customer environments prove these advantages, often delivering performance orders of magnitude better than screen scraping. There is no stronger testimonial for the API method of CICS integration than actual customer data. This data comes – unsolicited – from a HostBridge customer implementing a mainframe web services strategy with the HostBridge JavaScript Engine (HB.js). During a five-day processing window, this customer ran over 2 million production transactions, had an average response time of less than a tenth of a second, with zero abends of the HB.js software:

HostBridge JavaScript Engine (HB.js) Performance & Reliability

These results are impressive, yet typical. HostBridge software is purpose built for the enterprise, engineered to deliver high performing CICS integrations that are reliable.

Mainframe RPA Benchmark

This same enterprise class of performance and reliability is available to enterprise that are using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platforms to automate business processes. As our blog documents, these advanced software platforms often rely on screen scraping to include CICS applications in automations. All of the major RPA platforms, however, support making HTTP calls to RESTful services. Using HB.js to create and implement RESTful services for mainframe automations provides major performance advantages as our benchmark shows:

Using RESTful services with RPA instead of screen scraping yields a 29X improvement in overall response time, for this benchmark.

These performance and reliability results are not exceptions, but represent what HostBridge customers have come to rely on. It doesn’t take long to develop and deploy the APIs that deliver these kinds of results. Nor is it costly. Conducting a HostBridge proof-of-concept takes the risk out and provides definitive performance data. To learn more about completing a no-cost, no-risk HostBridge Pilot Program, simply contact us.