- What is the Service Availability Forum mission?
- Which areas are addressed by the Service Availability Forum specifications?
- What impact do Service Availability Forum specifications have on the industry?
- Who is implementing products based on specifications released by the Service Availability Forum? What products are commercially available currently that conform to the Service Availability Forum specifications?
- Who benefits from the specification implementations?
- How do service providers benefit from the Service Availability Forum and its specifications?
- How does the Service Availability Forum relate to other consortia and standards bodies, e.g., PICMG, The Linux Foundation, SCOPE Alliance, CP-TA, etc.?
- What is the difference between the SA Forum and OpenSAF?
- Service Availability Forum members include companies that compete with each other in the market place. Why are they cooperating in the forum?
- How is the Service Availability Forum addressing issues such as compliance?
- Are the leading Telco and equipment suppliers members of the SA Forum?
- What’s next for the SA Forum?
- How can I become a Service Availability Forum member?
1. What is the Service Availability Forum mission?
The Service Availability™ Forum is a consortium that develops, publishes, educates on and promotes open specifications for carrier-grade and mission-critical systems. SA Forum specifications enable COTS ecosystems for highly available platforms, streamline development and accelerate time to market.
2. Which areas are addressed by the Service Availability Forum specifications?
There are two major areas addressed by the SA Forum specifications: the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) and the Application Interface Specification (AIS). The HPI specification separates the hardware from management middleware and makes each independent of the other. The AIS standardizes the interface between SA Forum-compliant high availability middleware and service applications. The latest SA Forum release introduces a new service called Platform Management that bridges the SA Forum’s Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) and Application Interface Specification (AIS), enabling greater service availability, application portability and platform usability.
3. What impact do Service Availability Forum specifications have on the industry?
The SA Forum specifications enable a viable ecosystem of best of breed software components to be used in carrier-grade systems, thus reducing the need to develop proprietary software solutions to meet the HA requirements of this highly demanding environment.
4. Who is implementing products based on specifications released by the Service Availability Forum? What products are commercially available currently that conform to the Service Availability Forum specifications?
There are a wide variety of vendors that are implementing SA Forum specifications. These range from hardware platform vendors that implement and provide HPI services, to providers of operating systems, high availability middleware, systems management software, databases, protocol stack providers, etc. Augmentix, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, GoAhead Software, HP, IBM, Intel, MontaVista Software, Motorola, Nortel, Oracle, OpenClovis and Sun Microsystems are just a few of the companies implementing the specifications in their products.
Companies can list products utilizing Service Availability Forum specifications on the SA Forum Implementation Registry page. This page describes the benefits that these standards-based products bring to the industry.
The SA Forum Web site also lists member announcements regarding plans to support SA Forum specifications. For specific SA Forum-based products and product road maps, please contact the individual member companies.
5. Who benefits from the specification implementations?
Standard-compliant platform products and components are now on the market. A number of TEMs have already indicated their support for the SA Forum specifications. There are currently a number of HPI implementations on the market today, and adoption of AIS specifications has continued to grow throughout 2008.
6. How do service providers benefit from the Service Availability Forum and its specifications?
Service providers require building blocks that enable them to deliver services faster, accelerate innovation, reduce lifecycle costs and provide equipment provider choice. They also require a new level of “future proofing” that protects their investments in next generation networks. Building blocks integrated from standards-based hardware and software components are critical in addressing these challenging requirements. The SA Forum specifications are a primary factor in making COTS availability middleware a reality and service providers are now beginning to specify this level of standards.
7. How does the Service Availability Forum relate to other consortia and standards bodies, e.g., PICMG, The Linux Foundation, SCOPE Alliance, CP-TA, etc.?
The Service Availability Forum collaborates with the above mentioned organizations to drive the commercial off-the-shelf ecosystem. The SA Forum has formal and informal liaison agreements with these organizations.
8. What is the difference between the SA Forum and OpenSAF?
The SA Forum develops, publishes, educates on and promotes open specifications for carrier-grade and mission-critical systems. The OpenSAF Foundation is an open source community with projects focused on high availability middleware. Its goal is to develop application middleware that is consistent with the SA Forum specifications.
9. Service Availability Forum members include companies that compete with each other in the market place. Why are they cooperating in the forum?
SA Forum member companies understand the importance of open interface specifications to ensure the overall success of their business. The entire industry is under tremendous pressure to reduce OpEx and CapEx in the creation and delivery of next generation networks and services. Creating standard interface specifications does not reduce competition, but rather, increases it by expanding customer choice and focusing the competition on unique value-add.
10. How is the Service Availability Forum addressing issues such as compliance?
The SA Forum has released the HPI B.01.01 Compliance Test Suite, which is designed to enable self-assessment of the SA Forum specifications. This test suite provides users a clear indication of their conformance to the specification. Anyone can execute this test suite in-house and provide the results to the SA Forum for audit.
A list of registered products that implement SA Forum specifications can be found on the implementation registry page. The SA Forum Implementation Registry is a process that enables companies to register their implementations of the SA Forum specifications. Members and non-members can submit their products for posting on this page.
11. Are the leading Telco and equipment suppliers members of the SA Forum?
The SA Forum counts among its members the leading Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) that champion a commercial off-the-shelf carrier-grade base platform environment. These SA Forum members represent more than 90% of the global NGN TELCO equipment market. A full list of SA Forum members is available at http://www.saforum.org/.
12. What’s next for the SA Forum?
Now that we have a critical mass of specifications, we are educating the system and application development community on the service availability solution. The SA Forum will continue along this path, broadening its focus to raise awareness of applications based on existing AIS implementations. We are creating programs to accelerate the adoption of SA Forum specifications by application developers, including the following:
Also keep an eye out for updates and additions to our library of specifications for uninterrupted service availability.
13. How can I become a Service Availability Forum member?
Contact SA Forum administration at to learn how to join the SA Forum.
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