Deploying applications to a platform

You can set up a platform to deploy and manage CICS® applications over multiple CICS regions. Use CICS Explorer® or the IBM® CICS SDK for Java™ to create a platform, applications, and policies to manage the applications.

1. Create and install a platform.
   See Setting up a platform.
2. For each application that you want to deploy to the platform, create CICS bundles that define or import the components of the application, and declare application entry points for the resources that provide access to the application. Create and export an application bundle and an application binding to package the CICS bundles into an application.
   See Packaging applications for deployment.
3. Create policies containing policy rules to manage the applications in your platform.
   Policy rules describe controls or actions that can be applied to one or more application tasks that run in a platform. A policy is defined and deployed in a CICS bundle.
   See CICS Policies.
4. Install, enable, then make available each application that you want to deploy to the platform.
   See Installing an application on a platform.
5. Use the application context data generated for your applications to monitor and measure how much resource each application is using. You can add further policy rules to automatically respond when resource usage exceeds thresholds.
   See Measuring the resource usage of applications.
6. As your capacity requirements increase or decrease, add CICS regions to the platform or remove them from it.
   See Administering platforms and applications.
7. Update and install new versions of applications on the platform as required, and make them unavailable, disable, or discard them if they are no longer required.
   See Administering platforms and applications.