It starts simply enough. First someone builds a SOAP interface for an internal system; then the next upgrade to your financial package sports a Web services API. At some point you wake up and realize that all these services need to be managed.

Web services management includes not just monitoring but also critical activities such as controlling access, logging transactions, and performing version control. CoreSV 4.0 from Oracle is a Web services management platform that provides all these capabilities in an easy to install and understand package.

From Exclusive: CoreSV brings management simplicity to Web services | InfoWorld | Review
Referenced Mon Apr 18 2005 09:34:39 GMT-0600 (MDT)

I enjoyed going back and looking at Core again. I was impressed with how straightforward the product was. Some of it is just the fact that I'm getting very comfortable with the idea of intermediaries and what they do, but I have to give credit to Oblix (now Oracle) for refining the product and removing unnecessary complexity.

I beat them up in the review about pricing. It's not just COREsv, everyone does the same thing. I'm just not buying enterprise software pricing anymore. Part of the reason is that I'm involved in several small companies in one capacity or another and see that they have just as much reason to need things like Web services management as anyone else, but they're not in a position to spend $100K on it.