IBM gives a kick to CICS To modernize its venerable line of mainframe-based CICS middleware, IBM last week introduced an updated version of its CICS Transaction Server that enables IT to extend the product to work better with SOAs (service-oriented architectures) through Web services. With the release of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 3.1, administrators can now integrate their traditional workloads to fully participate in an SOA.