The Service Availability (SA) Forum has made impressive strides in helping create a viable, vibrant ecosystem of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software component suppliers. Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) and other verticals are leveraging the Forum’s work to build carrier-grade equipment they have traditionally built in-house using proprietary technologies. SA Forum has brought together major providers of computer platforms, operating systems, middleware, application services, and telecom systems to produce specifications that can be used to develop portable, interoperable, and reusable applications and services. The latest version (Release 5) focuses on two major areas. The Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) discovers and enumerates available resources so software can manage the platform in a hardware agnostic manner. The Application Interface Specification (AIS) enables developers to author applications that are not only highly available, but are portable across middleware implementations from multiple suppliers.

HPI is already enjoying considerable commercial success. Hardware system providers, including both AdvancedTCA and blade server manufacturers, are offering HPI services as an integral part of their systems. Helping along is the OpenHPI project that greatly simplifies the task of those wishing to quickly HPI-enable hardware platforms. The AIS is seeing industry traction at several levels. Commercial implementations of comprehensive middleware services based on the AIS interfaces are now available. So are open source versions from projects such as OpenAIS and OpenSAF. Independent software vendors (ISVs) providing services such as network management and configuration management are now adapting their offerings to the AIS interfaces. Finally, more NEPs are developing their secret sauce, that is, their revenue generating applications and services, to the AIS specifications.

Originally, the Forum’s specifications were targeted primarily at telecommunications. Recently, other verticals, where continued service availability is essential, have begun to adopt SA Forum interfaces. Of particular note is the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) market that is specifying HPI and AIS in mission critical applications.

One key to the success of the SA Forum is its close working relationship with other industry consortia. For example, it regularly receives feedback from the SCOPE Alliance on its specifications. This typically takes the form of middleware profiles, or middleware gap analysis, helping prioritize areas requiring special attention, or gaps that must be addressed to meet the NEPs’ needs. The formal relationship with the Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) is helping accelerate the definition and establishment of formal interoperability and compliance programs.

Momentum towards standardization of service availability middleware is growing. One major reason is the need equipment manufacturers have to control costs and get revenue-generating applications to market quicker. Another is the commitment and contribution by leading organizations to write and publish specifications that help tackle this problem. Adoption of the SAF specifications by solution providers, NEPs, ISVs, and now A&D system developers show that the transition from proprietary to COTS is happening now and the SA Forum is helping light the way.

Asif Naseem is the President of the SA Forum, and John Fryer is its Marketing Workgroup Chair. You can reach them at anaseem@goahead.com and john.fryer@emerson.com, respectively.