Most organizations are researching, considering and even implementing service-oriented architectures (SOAs) within or across their IT environments. With SOA comes SOA technology, including Web services standards, XML, and more. As these standards and technologies mature and are deployed for high-volume production applications, there’s an increasing chance that some of these technologies will find their way into packaged hardware solutions or SOA appliances.
Perhaps the best place to start a discussion of SOA appliances, though, is with a brief discussion of where SOA fits into the business drivers and what SOA really means to a business. It’s important to keep the overall goals and benefits in mind.
