IBM announced it has taken technology originally developed to help customers shift IT processing resources during periods of peak activity--such as dealing with unpredictable surges in Internet traffic or processing increased levels of stock transactions--and merged these virtualization capabilities with its service oriented architecture offerings.

Specifically, virtualization capabilities on the IBM System p servers combined with IBM middleware for SOA will allow customers to maximize existing hardware and software resources to centralize administrative tasks, streamline business processes and improve overall system performance resulting in a more efficient organization.

<A HREF="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21237.wss">IBM's Advanced POWER Virtualization technology</A> for an SOA allows a single server to be divided into multiple partitions which can each run different operating systems such as UNIX and Linux and multiple applications. It also allows processing resources to be instantaneously shifted from one partition to another when it is needed in times of peak demand to provide business flexibility. In addition, the optional High-Availability Cluster Multiprocessing program can provide fail-over protection in an SOA to provide continuous availability.