Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) yesterday announced that it intends to form an industry-wide consortium that will assume stewardship for the OpenSAF™ project the company announced in February. The company also announced the first release of the open source code related to the project.
The consortium also will manage any future development of the OpenSAF code base. Leading companies including Ericsson, HP and Nokia Siemens Networks have expressed support for this initiative.
The open source project will establish a broadly adopted high availability operating environment that can be leveraged by computing technology companies, network equipment providers (NEPs) and other industries requiring high availability. Independent software vendors (ISVs) will be able to use OpenSAF as a benchmark for creating highly available applications. OpenSAF includes an implementation of the Service Availability™ Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS). Details of the OpenSAF code release and additional information on the OpenSAF initiative can be found at www.opensaf.org.
As an open source project, OpenSAF has no dependencies on specific vendors’ products and support plans and future enhancements will be directly determined by the users of, and contributors to, the OpenSAF project. Adopting OpenSAF will enable more efficient use of in-house software engineering resources, and additional tools will be provided to enable application development and deployment services.
“We are very pleased to announce our intent to form an industry-wide consortium that will manage the open source project and also to make this initial OpenSAF code base available. This is an important next step following our original announcement of the project in February,” said John Fryer, leading the OpenSAF project on behalf of Motorola’s Embedded Communications Computing business. “We are also pleased with the decisions of a broad segment of industry leaders such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and HP to provide initial support for the OpenSAF project.”
About OpenSAF
OpenSAF is an open source project designed to develop a complete highly available operating environment based on SA Forum standards. The objective of the OpenSAF project is to accelerate broad adoption of a SA Forum compliant operating environment.
The goals of the OpenSAF project are as follows:
- Create an open source implementation of a high availability operating environment which includes the SA Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS)
- Develop necessary additional complementary services necessary to deploy and manage the software
- Help accelerate the development of SA Forum specifications by proposing enhancements
- Establish a broadly adopted high availability operating environment that can be leveraged by computing technology companies, NEPs, and other industries requiring high availability, and ISVs.
- Utilize an open source licensing model not tied to any commercial implementation
Interested companies may download the code from the OpenSAF website, http://www.opensaf.org.
Companies supporting the OpenSAF project
“Ericsson strongly supports the release of OpenSAF and we are firmly committed to the goals of the OpenSAF project. We have already contributed functionality to the project and intend to continue in the same direction,” said Mats Nilsson, Head of Portfolio Management and Terminals, Multimedia Solutions, Ericsson. “The OpenSAF reference implementations will accelerate the development and improve the quality of future specifications.“
„Nokia Siemens Networks is a consistent and strong supporter of industry collaboration and the Open Source model as demonstrated by its leadership in the Service Availability Forum and the SCOPE Alliance. We at Nokia Siemens Networks believe that the OpenSAF project is the last crucial element in defining our COTS-based Carrier Grade Base Platform strategy,“ said Stephan Scholz Chief Technology Officer, Nokia Siemens Networks.
„HP is an active supporter of open source initiatives, and we believe OpenSAF shows promise as a leading open, standards-based high-availability platform,“ said Randy Hergett, R&D Director for Open Source & Linux Organization, HP. „We have received strong customer interest for OpenSAF on HP’s telecom platforms and are very supportive of this initiative.“
“The SA Forum’s success will greatly benefit from the availability of implementations that utilize its interface specifications, as seen with HPI,” said Asif Naseem, SA Forum President. “The formation of OpenSAF will help bring additional real world AIS implementations to the market, and is another important step towards supporting the on-going success of SA Forum and its specifications.”
“We will transition our Avantellis™ series communications servers to utilize OpenSAF,” said Jorge Magalhaes, director of marketing, Embedded Communications Computing, Motorola, Inc. “This will make a pre-integrated and validated ATCA based computing platform available to the market shortly after the first release of the open source code.”
About Motorola
Motorola is known around the world for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. Inspired by our vision of seamless mobility, the people of Motorola are committed to helping you connect simply and seamlessly to the people, information and entertainment that you want and need. We do this by designing and delivering „must have“ products, „must do“ experiences and powerful networks — along with a full complement of support services. A Fortune 100 company with global presence and impact, Motorola had sales of US $42.9 billion in 2006. For more information about our company, our people and our innovations, please visit http://www.Motorola.com.
