XCOM, is a proprietary file transfer utility owned by Computer Associates. It has been popular on mainframe

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

 and midrange

Midrange computer

Midrange computers, or midrange systems, are a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframe computers and microcomputers.The class emerged in the 1960s and machines were generally known at the time as minicomputers - especially models from Digital Equipment Corporation , Data General,...

 computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s for many decades and functions on both SNA and TCP/IP networks. XCOM establishes a peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

 connection as opposed to FTP

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

 which is client/server relationship. The remote system can initiate the same range of transfer capabilities as local system.

XCOM provides automatic checkpoint/restart/recovery and extensive audit logging. It also provides data compression, record packing.

History

Spectrum Concepts Inc. of New York City, which was primarily a software consulting firm, originally developed XCOM 6.2 in the late 1970s and sold it as a product on many platforms. In 1992 Spectrum Concepts Inc. merged with Legent Inc. which in turn was bought by Computer Associates in 1995.

Current use

XCOM lost popularity in the 1990s to FTP due to licensing costs, but still remains popular in industries dominated by mainframes such as banking, insurance and telecommunications.