Santa Clara, Calif., March 14, 2001 —The High Availability Forum, an industry group of hardware and software manufacturers, today released a report titled "Providing Open Architecture High Availability Solutions." (PDF format, 814 kB) This critical report supplies important guidelines that facilitate the development of systems for the Internet and telecom infrastructure that have virtually no down-time, which are commonly referred to as high availability (HA) systems.

"High-end hardware and software running the world's communications infrastructure demands 99.999 percent reliability, which is a matter too serious to be left to the inexperienced," said Richard Grigonis, chief technical editor of Computer Telephony magazine. "The combined, expertise of the Forum members brings an authoritative weight to the advice and conclusions drawn in the report, making it a must read for developers of HA systems."

The Forum's report furthers the adoption of the open architecture model by providing important best-known methods and capabilities for the development of HA systems. Topics that are addressed within the report include redundant hardware and software components, storing information, fault management, replacing and upgrading components and dynamic reconfiguration of the system—all essential factors that lead to the successful implementation and operation of HA systems.

In order to meet Internet growth needs, telecom infrastructure manufacturers are being required to rapidly provide mission-critical systems with high levels of availability. Due to pressure to bring products to market faster, and the costs and complexity of system development, manufacturers are migrating to open architecture building blocks available from multiple vendors. The building block approach allows them to quickly and efficiently enhance systems and networks, while maintaining the highest levels of service and reliability.

The open architecture model allows system components including hardware, operating systems, middleware and applications to interact more efficiently. Additionally, with the integration of off-the-shelf, HA solutions for these systems, developers no longer need to create in-house high availability software and can focus their attention on specific product development.

"We believe that the industry has now reached the level of maturity where high availability will be an essential part of any communications solution and this calls for an open HA architecture framework. Nokia supports open interfaces and believes that the open high availability architecture will significantly widen the business opportunities of middleware and application vendors. Nokia wants to be one of the drivers to implement the guidelines developed by the High Availability Forum and ultimately bring users higher quality applications," said Mr. Ari Virtanen, vice president of Nokia Networks.

Formed to make HA systems easily accessible and more reliable, the High Availability Forum aims to simplify and accelerate the development of open architecture systems, which provide high levels of service availability. Members of the Forum include, Dialogic (an Intel Company), GoAhead Software, Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel Corporation, LynuxWorks, MontaVista Software, Motorola Computer Group, RadiSys and Ziatech (an Intel Company).

Read the HA Forum's "Providing Open Architecture High Availability Solutions" white paper (PDF format, 814 kB).

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