Interviews

Providing continuous service availability is a crucial factor for many industries, especially in the telecommunication sector. For instance, people always expect to hear a dial tone when they pick up their phones, and they always do. This is the level of reliability and service availability that is needed in the newly converged mobile phones IP networks.

The level of reliability and high availability present in circuit- switched networks has not yet been achieved in IP packet-based networks. Without the ability to keep services highly available (HA), telecom platforms and any other platforms with similar HA requirements will not be ready for such mission-critical applications.

The Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) plays an important role in this area. The forum creates and promotes open, standard interface specifications that will enable the industry to build an interoperable, multiservice network capable of ensuring continuous delivery of voice, data, and multimedia services to carriers and their end-user customers.

In a nutshell, the SA Forum defines the interfaces of the middleware and focuses on application program interfaces (APIs) for hardware platform management and for application failover in the API. SA Forum-compliant middleware provides services to an application that needs to be HA in a portable way. The middleware is responsible for the management of the system components, including the application components, in the appropriate way so it qualifies to be HA.

We interviewed Manfred Reitenspiess, president of the SA Forum, to get the full story on the SA Forum.

LWM: Please introduce us to the Service Availability Forum - its history, members, mission, and goals.
Manfred Reitenspiess: The SA Forum, founded in May 2001, is a consortium of industry-leading companies covering network equipment providers; computer system vendors; silicon, board, and system platform providers; system integrators; and application, middleware, and operating system vendors.

The SA Forum's mission is to foster an ecosystem that enables the use of commercial off-the-shelf building blocks in the creation of HA network infrastructure products, systems, and services. To fulfill this mission, the SA Forum develops and publishes high availability and management software interface specifications and promotes and facilitates their adoption by the industry.

LWM: Currently the SA Forum is defining the platform interface specifications and the application interface specifications. Does the SA Forum have any plans for defining other interfaces? What is the SA Forum roadmap beyond the current scope (i.e., HPI and AIS)?
Reitenspiess: Because of their crucial importance for service availability, the SA Forum has started the specification work with application APIs for the hardware platform interface (HPI) and for high availability services for application programmers (AIS). These interfaces are the starting point for implementing carrier grade services, i.e., services fulfilling the stringent availability needs of network and service operators. Additionally, we have begun work on a standard object model representation for SA Forum system entities and on industry-standard distributed systems management interfaces to provide common management application access (Systems Management Specification, SMS). This will also include APIs for object life-cycle management and for managing configuration data.

HPI and AIS specifications published this year have undergone a number of review cycles with literally hundreds of comments for improvement. They are expected to be very stable at this point in time. SMS is planned for publication in early 2005.

In parallel to the specification work, an architecture group has been initiated that is analyzing carrier grade requirements and the role of SA Forum specifications in a carrier hardware and software landscape. First results from this group (e.g., the need for tracing or life software updates) will go into the planning for updated versions of AIS and HPI. Upward compatibility is a key aspect during this planning process.

The SA Forum's work is clearly focused on the needs in carrier grade environments and follows a very aggressive plan to respond to market needs. In the long run, the SA Forum sees a need for standardized service availability interfaces outside the carrier grade arena and will address those as appropriate.

LWM: Security features in carrier grade platforms and telecom applications are core requirements to guarantee high availability of applications. To what extent are SA Forum interfaces addressing security issues?
Reitenspiess: We fully recognize the dichotomy of security and availability requirements in HA environments. The security of a service is as important for the availability of a service as is the availability of a security feature for the security of a service. However, security specifications such as IPSEC are seen as a complement to SA Forum specifications. Therefore, the SA Forum is actively pursuing a clear partnership strategy in which we'll leverage work done in other forums (e.g., Distributed Management Task Force, DMTF) to expedite the adoption and productive use of our interfaces.

LWM: Does the SA Forum have any test suites or compliance tests that ensure that commercial products have interfaces that are compliant to the SA Forum specifications? Or when will they be available?
Reitenspiess: We see compliance enforcement as a critical success factor for the adoption of our standardization work. This will give adopters of SA Forum specifications the assurance they expect on the compliant products and on the longevity of their architectural decisions.

We have started very early on a certification program, which we plan to install mid-term and which will be implemented by independent test labs. Current work focuses on the validation of labs and on the installation of a viable business model.

LWM: Are there any commercial products available in the market that are validated to be SA Forum compliant?
Reitenspiess: Some of our members have already released SA Forum-compliant products. For the time being, the SA Forum has installed a registration procedure for these products to be registered on a voluntary basis. Companies that register products are responsible for stating the degree of compliance and how they have tested the compliance of their product. Please see www.saforum.org for registered products.

LWM: What benefits of adopting open interfaces does the SA Forum foresee?
Reitenspiess: The telecommunications market is undergoing paradigm shifts in multiple aspects:

• IP-based technologies are replacing traditional proprietary network structures.
• IT-based technologies are replacing proprietary nodes in the network.

The adoption of open interfaces is a key gating factor to take advantage of the tremendous business potential in the use of IP and IT standards. Network operators will be able to provide new offerings to their corporate customers that help them focus on their core business competencies. Network manufacturers and integrators will profit from standard computer and communications components in their applications development and integration tasks. Only through interfaces as standardized in the SA Forum will these applications provide the carrier grade qualities expected by network operators and their customers.

Specific benefits of adopting open interfaces include shorter development cycles, development cost savings, lower total cost of ownership, improved design flexibility, reduced development risk, faster innovation, enhanced portability and integration capabilities, and increased resources focused on innovation of solutions.

LWM: What is the relationship between the SA Forum and other consortia such as the Open Source Development Labs, Linux Standard Base, and the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group?
Reitenspiess: The SA Forum is focused on the specification of interfaces for HA services and their management. These interfaces are agnostic to the underlying operating system and the hardware architectures. However, we welcome a close relationship with PICMG, OSDL, and other standards groups such as DMTF or NPF (Network Procesing Forum) to leverage joint interests and avoid duplication of work. Even more important, all of these mentioned standards bodies are responsible for elements of the (tele)communications value chain. They are typically used in combination for the deployment of advanced network elements and applications.

LWM: The SA Forum and OSDL are both defining cluster usage models. Are these efforts synchronized to avoid redundant work or inconsistencies between the two consortia?
Reitenspiess: We are proud that SA Forum interface standards are referenced in OSDL requirements specifications. Our specifications are the basis for OSDL implementation work. This illustrates the high quality of SA Forum specifications and their adoption by important market players. Many consortia members are active in both groups, and mechanisms for information exchange have been established.

Similar relationships are expected to be established with other consortia, always keeping an eye on our mission to foster an ecosystem of open, commercial off-the-shelf building blocks.

LWM: What role can an open source implementation of the SA Forum interfaces play in having a wider adoption of the standard interfaces?
Reitenspiess: Open source implementations are an important driver for the establishment of open, off-the-shelf environments. The license structure facilitates the adoption of such implementations at a wide number of users.

Traditionally, HA interfaces were an integral part of proprietary telecommunications solutions. Despite some products on the market, their adoption was limited due to the proprietary nature of their interfaces. Application portability across multiple implementations was not possible. An open source implementation of SA Forum interfaces will strongly support their adoption in multiple ways:

• The license structure provides an inexpensive way for many applications developers and ISVs to take advantage of preimplemented critical software required to fulfill the availability requirements of carrier grade environments.
• The standardized interfaces give users assurance to be independent of a specific implementer of the interfaces.
• The open source approach strengthens this message.

LWM: Do you see SA Forum members contributing and supporting open source projects that target implementing both the HPI and AIS interfaces?
Reitenspiess: A number of activities have started around the SA Forum specifications; for example, cooperation with academic institutions and the OpenHPI project. SA Forum members are involved in these projects. We are also supporting the International Service Availability Symposium in order to foster interaction between the academic community and industry.

LWM: When will we see a large number of applications SA Forum compliant?
Reitenspiess: Despite the advancement of open, commercial off-the-shelf technologies, the adoption of SA Forum interfaces and their use in applications is dependent upon a number of factors. Investment levels at network operators are still relatively low, but growing. Before SA Forum-compliant applications will be widely deployed, the interface implementations must be very stable and well tested. Last, but not least, SA Forum-compliant products are but one element in the overall telecommunications ecosystem.

LWM: Once the middleware is made available, what is the strategy to get applications to use SA Forum APIs?
Reitenspiess: According to our mission, we are working with SA Forum member companies and other consortia to promote the open, commercial off-the-shelf approach for HA and the overall standards-based ecosystem. Already, network and service operators are providing input to the SA Forum planning and specification process.

An open compliance program in cooperation with independent test labs will create the necessary trust in the standards-based approach.

LWM: How can people get involved with the SA Forum, both as companies and individuals?
Reitenspiess: The SA Forum invites interested companies to participate in quarterly Information Sessions. They can also find more information on our Web site at www.saforum.org or by contacting the SA Forum at 503 297-2576.

About Manfred Reitenspiess
Manfred Reitenspiess is the president of the Service Availability Forum, a consortium of industry-leading communications and computing companies that fosters an ecosystem to enable the use of commercial off-the-shelf building blocks in the creation of high-availability network infrastructure products, systems, and services. With more than 10 years of experience in telecommunications, Manfred is the director of business development of RTP 4 Continuous Services high-availability middleware at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. He earned a PhD from the University Erlangen-Nuernberg. He also serves as speaker of the "Security and Safety" division of the German Computer Society (GI).