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October 27, 1997, Section: News

IBM:E-commerce technology plans

By Charlotte Dunlap

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM Corp. is emphasizing mainframe access with its new electronic-commerce technology, being outlined today.

The TXSeries middleware, slated for release early next year, extends existing mainframe-based transaction applications to the Internet. IBM executives said the mainframe is still where most large corporations house the majority of their data.

The product was created by IBM's subsidiary, Transarc Corp., and taps IBM's core transaction processing technology, which organizes the communications between large numbers of terminals. The new products have evolved from IBM's distributed transaction processing products, called Distributed CICS and Encina.

"With the TXSeries, we're taking some of the [transaction processing] monitor software we've had available on Unix and NT and integrating it into a more comprehensive package for customers," said Jeff Eppinger, chief technology officer of Transarc, Pittsburgh. He said the product likely will sell for about $4,000 per server.

"The emphasis we're putting on this package is strong mainframe connectivity. Banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, catalog companies-what they want to do is run the Internet applications against that [mainframe] data," he added.

At the back end, Armonk-based IBM is providing Lotus Development Corp.'s Domino GO Web server. The technology also will work with Web server technology from Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

Further, IBM has included security technology through Kerberos, a security system that lets the user log onto the network without sending a password nonencrypted. Kerberos is used to identify remote parties.

Kerberos is a communications protocol developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is used to provide authentication to identify the parties in communication.