Hi,
At a high level an Oracle application is looking for the following services from a load balancer:
1) Ability to intercept and distribute traffic across the available APPL_TOP nodes
2) Monitor health of the nodes and overall environment.
3) Provide session persistence, typically cookie based but can be source IP driven if there is not a proxy
I believe IOS SLB will meet these requirements except for cookie persistence and support for server to server traffic flow.
I think IOS SLB will break an Oracle application such as EBS 11i or 12i when you ask it to load balance flows between servers. This communication is necessary, at least in 11i/12i environments. It is my understanding that IOS SLB can not balance flows in and out of the same interface.
If you look at ACE, it supports the requirements of the application and can provide the offload services you mentioned above. In addition, ACE can be virtualized so as your business grows and you need new load balancing services simply add a new context to ACE and reap the rewards.
Hope that helps, Chris