Service Availability Forum Reports Outstanding Response to Request for Proposal. Forum members collaborate to develop the first open Service Availability™ specification to help facilitate the development of Carrier-grade Communications and Computing infrastructure.

The strong response to the RFP underscores the commitment of this industry-leading forum to successfully deliver on its mission to create and promote open Service Availability programming interface specifications that will aid the development of packet-based communications equipment and systems and applications. The Forum is scheduled to deliver its first platform application programming and application programming (API) interfaces by then end of this year.

"Leading companies in our industry have come together in an unparalleled effort to build the open specifications to deliver carrier-grade equipment and applications," said Timo Jokiaho, Director, Carrier Grade Platforms, Nokia. "By creating the necessary open specifications, the Forum further enables innovation and growth in a collaborative environment to create healthy conditions for a competitive global environment in the computing and communications market."

Companies involved in the creation of these specifications span the entire computing and communications industry, from hardware and telecom equipment manufacturers to middleware and operating system providers. By collaborating on these responses, member companies worked to deliberately address the needs of all industry members dedicated to the fast delivery of products that provide carrier-grade availability. The responses covered the areas specified by the Forum, and clearly reflect the need for standardized interfaces at the platform middleware and application level for use in the delivery of highly available applications.

"As we move toward faster and more mission critical communications infrastructures, it is imperative that manufacturers and service providers work together to guarantee standardized levels of availability and reliability across these networks," says Tim Scannell, president of Shoreline Research, a mobile consultancy based in Quincy, MA. "This effort requires open systems, compatible and consistent operating platforms, and dependable applications designs - all of which are goals of the Service Availability Forum."

"Many of the Forum members joined specifically for the opportunity to contribute their experiences to the creation of open Service Availability specifications," said Michael O'Brien, president of the Service Availability Forum. "With this level of help from industry-leading players, the Forum continues to move swiftly and successfully toward meeting the technical goals laid out late last year."

The Forum's technical working group is currently evaluating the member responses. During this process, responding companies will have an opportunity to collaborate and further refine their submissions. The responses will then be compiled into one application interface baseline document and one platform interface baseline document. From those documents, the Forum will start the final step: formulating the specifications to be published later this year.

About the Service Availability Forum
The Service Availability Forum is the industry body dedicated to creating and promoting the open specifications necessary for quickly building global communications systems that enable ultra-dependability for users of multi-service, packet-based networks. Created by industry leading communications and computing companies, the Service Availability Forum's open programming interface specifications will help facilitate the fast delivery of dependable, differentiated, cost-effective communications infrastructure equipment and applications. Service Availability Forum membership offers the opportunity to take part in building the availability specifications for the future. For more information about the Service Availability Forum, visit www.saforum.org.