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SCOPE Alliance Update for 2007 The SCOPE Alliance has been busy in 2007 developing profiles and gap analyses. First established in 2006 by leading TEMs (Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, and Siemens), SCOPE’s mission is to promote open carrier grade base platforms created from Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and software and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) building blocks. It also promotes interoperability. Its purpose is to make specifications better meet the needs of equipment developers. SCOPE is neither a standards organization nor a developer of specifications. it primarily creates profiles and identifies gaps in existing specifications. Profiles describe subsets of and prioritize features of such specifications and provide guidance to ecosystem suppliers, standards developers, and product implementers. The profiles cover all major elements required to create an open standards-based carrier grade platform, namely Carrier Grade OS, middleware, Carrier Grade Hardware, and mezzanine cards. The alliance grew significantly during 2007, adding thirteen new members, including Nortel. SCOPE has released five profiles/documents this year, namely:
The Carrier Grade Middleware Profile v1.0, released in February, is based on Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) specifications. It considers two primary areas, focused on the Application Interface Specification (AIS). The first defines and prioritizes the SA Forum services that should exist in any carrier grade middleware services implementation. The second records requirements for third-party applications and components that execute within a system using SA Forum compliant middleware. In September, SCOPE released a companion profile, Carrier Grade Middleware Profile v2.0. This profile identifies and defines perceived gaps in current SA Forum specifications. The profiles provide direction to the ecosystem, leading to an increase in interoperable carrier grade elements. High priority gaps were noted in the areas of comprehensive middleware statistics and measurements, hardware management, and the Trace service. The Carrier Grade Linux OS Profile was extended in April with the release of Version1.2. The CGL profiles complete a comprehensive set of definitions, requirements, and priorities for the Linux Foundation’s Carrier Grade Linux™ Specification 4.0. They describe both mandatory features and gaps in the specification. The updated CGL profile represents the critical elements required in a Linux operating system distribution when creating control and service plane network elements. The PICMG AdvancedTCA and AdvancedMC specifications were the focus of profiles released in July - AMC Port Map Gap-Analysis v1.0 & ATCA 2.0. The AdvancedMC profile aims to narrow the number of options in this specification. It makes specific recommendations and highlights gaps for both AdvancedMC and MicroTCA. Following extensive feedback from the first AdvancedTCA profile (released in 2006), significant extra detail was added to the v2.0 profile. Much work went into defining gaps and priorities to enable interoperable building blocks that make Carrier Grade Base Platforms easy to integrate. The profiles developed by the SCOPE Alliance are helping focus the efforts of the whole open standards ecosystem. This cooperative work is a key element in advancing the market for COTS-based open carrier grade platforms. Full SCOPE documents and profiles may be viewed and downloaded free at www.Scope-Alliance.org/docs.html Ron Breault is a member of the SCOPE Board of Directors, and is a Senior Architect in the Common Engineering organization at Nortel. You can reach him at breault@nortel.com. |