diamond partners that were at this form. GoHead. Lynux Works,
Motorola and Ziatech.
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." 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 Com |
