New gear and services to boot for secure SOA XML security appliance provider DataPower got gobbled up by IBM last fall, but the role of DataPower’s technology in IBM’s SOA strategy wasn’t clear until last week, when IBM announced three new appliances that use it, and an array of Global Services offerings to match.Nev Zunic, a distinguished engineer at IBM Global Services, said he likes DataPower’s capability of accelerating the encryption of XML messages.That capability can now be found on the new WebSphere DataPower XML Security Gateway XS40 and Integration Appliance X150. The XS40 is a fully loaded XML security solution that supports WS-Security, SAML 2.0 tokens, schema validation, and XML access control, in addition to XML firewalling. The X150 focuses on message transformation and routing to bridge systems, and it has all the security functions of the XS40. Both devices have XML acceleration features found in the low-end WebSphere DataPower XML Accelerator XA35.“Offloading encryption operations onto a DataPower appliance will improve performance by an order of magnitude,” Zunic said.IBM Global Services will use the appliances as part of secure SOA deployments, with security assessment, requirements, architecture, and implementation. “We’re hand in hand with them. We’ve had our security consultants train on DataPower appliances, and we’ve invited the DataPower team to actually teach a training session at our IGS conference,” Zunic said.Boilerplate pledges of vendor neutrality notwithstanding, Zunic says that Global Services will be installing a lot of DataPower appliances in the implementation phase. Pure-play competitors Layer 7 and Reactivity may feel a little left out. Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry