Integration professionals have realized that point-to-point integration dramatically increases the complexity of building and maintaining corporate business processes. One manifestation of this is the increasing popularity of Service Oriented Architectures. To achieve maximum benefit from SOAs, it's important to carefully consider architecture and design principles before picking technology and working on practical examples.

In a properly factored design, integration appliances can greatly reduce cost while simplifying implementation and ongoing maintenance. Appliances can also help insulate companies from the inevitable changes common to any integration system by minimizing supporting infrastructure.