BEA Systems Inc. has updated Tuxedo, its venerable transaction-processing-monitoring system, to make it easier to convert legacy applications that run on it to Web services.

Tuxedo, developed 21 years ago by AT&T, is a critical component of many businesses' operational IT systems. Thousands of telecommunications, financial-services, and retail apps depend on its transaction-monitoring capabilities. BEA acquired Tuxedo, once the Unix world's alternative to IBM's CICS system, in 1996 from Novell.

Tuxedo 9.0, BEA's latest Tuxedo upgrade, can manage 5,000 transactions per second for a variety of operational applications. It's more tightly integrated with BEA's WebLogic Application Server. The WebLogic Tuxedo Connector that ties the two together now supports multithreading, so the connector can pass through more multiple processes at a time and track their status, connecting the right results from Tuxedo to the right app through WebLogic.

Tuxedo also connects to BEA Systems' new enterprise service bus, formerly known as Quicksilver and now called AquaLogic Service Bus. Aqualogic combines message-passing, routing, and Web-services-management capabilities, says Lorenzo Cremona, director of product marketing.

Tuxedo supports the updated Xerces XML parser, and BEA is building a framework that automatically invokes the XML messaging protocol, Simple Object Access Protocol, and Web-services stacks. The 9.0 version will support security plug-ins based on Kerberos, the Unix security system that allows single sign-on for a user of multiple applications, Cremona says.

Version 9.0 is available now. Customers using the beta version include Fujitsu, NEC, and Oki Electric Industry.