The idea is to add more flexibility to the job of parsing, threat prevention, and mediating XML messages so you could ramp up capacity on demand. By supporting real-time download and support, you could conceivably activate XML firewall capabilities on a moment's notice, although that strategy would only work if you've already been through the configuration process with other instances of the firewall.

For scalability, the new virtual appliance supports clustering, so it could run as a virtual partition in one or more nodes, and it can run in multi-tenant data centers that are already relying on virtualization.