KICKS is an enhancement for CMS & TSO on IBM mainframes (or emulators) that lets you run your CICS applications directly instead of having to 'install' those apps in CICS. You don't even need CICS itself installed on your mainframe.
KICKS provides a high level of source code compatibility with CICS. You can migrate applications either way between CICS and KICKS simply by recompiling. Whether for ease of testing, fast deployment to small groups of users, or simple Guerrilla Marketing, join your colleagues using KICKS to speed up their development efforts.
Being CMS & TSO based (ie, single user per instance), KICKS can't support thousands of users on a single system as CICS (many users per instance) can. But if KICKS can't support thousands of users, we've demonstrated it can support a few hundred (even on the smallest emulator systems), and if having separate instances means it can't run as many users it also means those users aren't so tied to each other's fates - one user's crash doesn't affect anybody else. This greatly reduced consequence of failure often means your new application's Time to Market can be dramatically shortened. And when your app is mature, reliable and you've grown it's user base up into the dozens you can move it to CICS with a few clicks.
Like CICS, KICKS supports file sharing among its users. Hundreds of CMS or TSO users share db2 tables or vsam files with no more concern than CICS users - and since KICKS vsam support is also available in batch there's usually no need to "close" KICKS vsam files just so batch jobs can access them.
Unlike CICS, KICKS requires no special systems or security services and can be easily installed by a single applications programmer with a CMS or TSO account.
Try it. Or browse the User's Guide...