It is not enough, however, for IT and the business to concern itself with only the applications and software systems used to conduct business (such as CRM, ERP, and SCM) to achieve these goals and arrive at what can be considered a successful SOA initiative. A successful SOA implementation relies as much on the flexibility of your network as it does the services and applications over which it will be delivered. Just as brittle, inflexible application integration technologies have been deemed unsuitable and unable to meet today's shifting business needs, so too have the static, inflexible network technologies become a hindrance to the delivery of dynamic, flexible service-oriented applications.

Without the ability to understand the unique needs of the services and applications that comprise your SOA implementation, the network can become the bottleneck that prevents you from realizing the full potential of your investment. An intelligent, application-aware network is a necessity to ensure that the benefits of your SOA implementation are not lost due to performance, availability, and security-related issues.

Over the years, application delivery controllers have been used as part of a delivery infrastructure to improve the performance, reliability, and security of the applications on which businesses depend. These devices provide stability by maintaining the availability of applications through load balancing and failover, and secure applications by reducing the entry points through which applications can be accessed.

While many of the same features and functions that enable application delivery controllers to provide secure, fast, and available applications can be utilized to help achieve the goals of SOA implementations, SOA introduces needs that require additional flexibility and a greater understanding of application architectures.

A service-oriented application delivery controller provides the flexibility required to support the dynamic nature of today's business and IT environments. By providing the means through which delivery policies can be applied to both services and applications, a service-oriented application delivery controller enables IT to meet its obligation to the business, while supporting business goals of agility, reuse, and risk mitigation.