The network outages that have received much publicity in recent months have generated a growing interest in service availability technology and solutions. This interest is translating into increasing traction for OpenSAF, an open source community focused on high availability middleware. OpenSAF is an implementation of SA Forum specifications, which aim to ensure that a service is always available (achieving five 9s or 99.999 percent uptime) regardless of hardware, software or user fault. OpenSAF middleware is used primarily in applications where high availability is a mandatory requirement such as telecommunications and the aerospace & defense industries.
The need for high availability also extends to many enterprise segments where there is a need to minimize planned downtime. The OpenSAF project is supported by the OpenSAF Foundation, and members include key industry leaders such as Ericsson, GoAhead Software, HP, Huawei, MontaVista and Wind River. The overall OpenSAF ecosystem has grown rapidly in recent months and is backed by development, test and application teams in a variety of commercial companies.
OpenSAF started gaining significant momentum in 2010 as the organization achieved several milestones, and this momentum has continued through 2011. Two recent examples include GoAhead Software joining as an OpenSAF board member and MontaVista also joining the OpenSAF board.
Additionally, last year OpenSAF announced Release 4.0 of its middleware platform, which introduced several new features, including improved software and platform management and increased modularity, enabling improved scalability. New services in 4.0 include the Software Management Framework (SMF) which allows management of both OpenSAF as well as the application code. The Platform Management service (PLM) was another addition to 4.0, which provides a bridge between OpenSAF and the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) specification. The introduction of Release 4.0 has made OpenSAF the most scalable, robust and comprehensive implementation of the SA Forum specifications – no other implementation has as many SA Forum services integrated and implemented.
Earlier this year, OpenSAF announced the public availability of Release 4.1, which includes further improvements over 4.0 based on direct feedback from the community; including alternative transport protocols and software upgrade rollback. These new enhancements have improved the overall usability of the platform, while still delivering a cost-effective, standards-based solution for creating highly available networks. The improvements in the project coupled with the high availability expertise within the project offer the strong level of quality required for deployment in carrier networks.
In addition to technical milestones, last year OpenSAF announced Ericsson's commercial deployment of OpenSAF in carrier networks. This represented the first public statement by a major telecom equipment manufacturer on commercial adoption, development and deployment of OpenSAF, demonstrating OpenSAF as a viable solution for major telecom equipment manufacturers. This has resulted in an increasing number of companies to inquire about OpenSAF solutions. Additionally, in October of 2010, GoAhead Software announced the commercial deployment of OpenSAFfire Version 6.0. These deployments in today's telecommunications platforms reaffirm the quality and maturity of the open source project and as a result, a growing number of deployments within the telecom sector and beyond are expected in the coming months.
Looking forward in 2011, OpenSAF will build on its momentum by improving upon its technical platform based on community feedback. Additionally, OpenSAF is focused on continuing to provide resources and educational opportunities to developers, engineering managers and users to help grow the market for open source implementations of SA Forum Specifications and increase deployments of OpenSAF. Most notably, the 2011 OpenSAF Conference is taking place May 17-18 at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. The event is a technical conference for the open source, high availability middleware community and is an opportunity to learn about the best practices for implementing the OpenSAF Project architecture on a diverse set of platforms.
The conference sessions will also share how implementing OpenSAF solutions can impact the bottom line and will feature examples of real-world case studies and implementations. The conference is expanding this year to include material for users, adopters and academics in addition to developers and will be attended by well-known technologists and architects in the HA middleware industry. Based on feedback from the previous year, topics that will be covered at this year's conference include Java, cloud computing, virtualization, Python bindings, migrating legacy applications, and more. Please visit the OpenSAF Conference webpage after the conference to download the archived 2011 OpenSAF Conference presentations, including the slides for each conference session. The 2010 presentations are currently available online.
In addition to the conference, OpenSAF has launched a webcast that will outline the key benefits of OpenSAF, as well as explore its thriving ecosystem. For more information on OpenSAF, visit www.opensaf.org or contact admin@list.opensaf.org.
Mike Houston serves as the OpenSAF Marketing Workgroup Chair and the director of Marketing at GoAhead Software.