BEAVERTON, Ore., Nov. 4 -- The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium of leading technology companies dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux, announced support for the cooperative development of OpenAIS, an open source Linux project that aims to implement the Service Availability Forum's (SA Forum) Application Interface Specification (AIS) for high availability network infrastructure in the telecommunications industry.

The OpenAIS project, started by Monta Vista Software, is now hosted at OSDL. Additional OSDL member companies are participating in the co-development of the project. OpenAIS is an open source implementation project of the SA Forum's Application Interface Specification (AIS). AIS specifies the primary interface between Service Availability Middleware and Carrier Grade network applications and services.

OpenAIS is being developed with the active support of the SA Forum and its member companies. This project will serve as a reference implementation of the interface specification in Carrier Grade Linux and therefore accelerate the consistent implementation of AIS by commercial implementers of Service Availability middleware and Carrier Grade applications. OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Requirements Definition, version 2.0, calls for support of the SA Forum's Application Interface Specification.

"The Service Availability Forum enables the adoption of off-the-shelf building blocks to create high availability network infrastructure products and services," said Mike Spies, liaison chair of the SA Forum. "We're pleased that OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux Working Group is supporting a project that will comply with the SA Forum AIS and applaud the progress the working group is making in preparing Linux for carrier-grade applications."

"OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux Working Group is helping to reduce the cost of rolling out high availability network infrastructure built around Linux," said Timo Jokiaho, director of technology for Nokia, a member of the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Working Group steering committee and former president of the SA Forum. "By identifying carrier-grade requirements and focusing resources on the key projects to meet these requirements, the OSDL working group can help accelerate adoption of Linux in the telecommunications sector."

OpenAIS aims to deliver production software for maximum (99.9999 percent) uptime operation in the face of network and system failures. The SA Forum's AIS defines six Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that help to maintain service during network failure. The OpenAIS project has completed developer implementations for four of the APIs:

Two API implementations are planned for the future:

"Telecommunication vendors have stringent requirements for their high availability infrastructure," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "Linux is up to the task and we welcome increased participation from the telecommunication vendors in defining Linux requirements and implementing carrier-grade infrastructure projects."

Additional information and software with full source code for OpenAIS is
available at http://developer.osdl.org/dev/openais/.

About the Service Availability Forum

The Service Availability Forum is a consortium of industry-leading communications and computing companies working together to foster an ecosystem that enables the use of commercial off-the-shelf building blocks in the creation of high availability network infrastructure products, systems and services. To achieve this goal, the Service Availability Forum develops and publishes high availability and management software interface specifications while promoting and facilitating their adoption by industry. Service Availability Forum membership offers the opportunity to help frame and implement the Service Availability solution. For more information about the Service Availability Forum, visit www.saforum.org.

About Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)

OSDL -- home to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux -- is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux. Founded in 2000 by CA, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel and NEC, OSDL is a non-profit organization at the center of Linux supported by a global consortium of more than 40 of the world's largest Linux customers and IT industry leaders. OSDL sponsors industry-wide initiatives around Linux in telecommunications, in the enterprise datacenter and on corporate desktops. The Lab also provides Linux expertise and computing and test facilities in the United States and Japan available to developers around the world. Visit OSDL on the Web at http://www.osdl.org/.

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Source: Open Source Development Labs, Inc.