Mercer Is., WA — (press release excerpt) — twenty companies today jointly announced the Service Availability Forum, an industry-wide coalition to fortify services and applications running on the currently overburdened global communications network.

The focus of the Service Availability Forum is service and software application dependability. While some recent industry initiatives focus on the speed and features within evolving communication systems, the Service Availability Forum will create and promote the open standards that will build the foundation for on-demand, uninterrupted landline and mobile network services.

The twenty founders of the Service Availability Forum are: Aztek Engineering, Compaq, F5 Networks, Force Computers, Fujitsu Siemens, GoAhead Software, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Intel Corporation, MontaVista Software, Motorola, Nokia, RadiSys, Siemens, Solid, SteelEye Technology, Stonesoft, TimesTen Performance Software, Vertel Corporation, and Wind River.

“As Internet and mobile communications and commerce become indispensable to end-customers and businesses, interruptions in those services are becoming less tolerable,” said Michael O'Brien, president of the Service Availability Forum. “Today, such interruptions are symptoms of the inability of our infrastructure to scale quickly and perform dependably. Our industry knows the best solution to address this problem quickly and cost-effectively is through the broad adoption of open standards.”

The aim of the Service Availability Forum is to make the content, communication, and transaction services delivered over the evolving packet-based communications network as dependable as the services delivered over the legacy circuit switched phone system. The goal of establishing the Service Availability Forum open interface specifications is two-fold: 1) eliminate frustrating service headaches such as lost connections, late voicemail delivery and slow data transmissions; and 2) reduce cost and accelerate development of the design and manufacture of communications network components and services.

To quickly and inexpensively deliver dependable communications offerings, the industry must adopt global, open standards that combine both high availability and service continuity requirements. The combination of these requirements creates the Service Availability model, and will help ensure the delivery of always-on, undisrupted services despite any system component failure.

Traditionally, high availability implies that while a single element within a system may fail, the system and its services can remain active by initiating automatic switch-over to redundant standby components without jeopardizing 99.999% availability requirements. A step further, Service Availability solutions are designed to preserve customer data and application state during switchover scenarios in order to provide continuity of service to the end-user.

Service Availability attributes include:

• On-demand service — meaning the system is up and services are available to meet or exceed customer requirements.

• Uninterrupted service — Customer sessions and state are maintained and preserved without disruption to service.

Currently, communications infrastructure products are implemented with proprietary interfaces — limiting software innovation and producing high development costs and lengthy time to market for developers and manufacturers. When disparate, proprietary pieces are connected in the new packet-based, multi-service network, the Service Availability concept — always-on, uninterrupted service — is jeopardized from the outset. The Service Availability Forum seeks to drive industry adoption of open interface specifications that will benefit independent software vendors and equipment, platform and service providers. These specifications are designed to create standard building block solutions that perform as effectively as the 99.999% availability levels set by the legacy, circuit-switched telephone network.

For businesses, the Service Availability Forum open interface specifications will make technology innovation easier, faster and less expensive. The deployment of compliant products within tomorrow's network will create a multi-vendor communications business ecosystem that delivers reliable services and wider selection of offerings to carriers, service providers, manufacturers and their customers. The Service Availability Forum expects to deliver its first interface specification within one year.

“Once the standards are in place and implemented, end-users will notice a significant enhancement in the reliability of their network access devices,” said O'Brien. “The Forum's vision is to make delivery of communications services on the new packet-based, multi-service network so dependable end-customers don't even think about it – like the water and electricity that goes to their home or office building, it's just there, whenever they need it.”

 
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