The OpenSAF project is gaining steam. Today, GoAhead Software announced that Ericsson has chosen OpenSAFfire, GoAhead's commercial distribution of the OpenSAF open source high availability (HA) software project.
Of course, the news marks a major milestone for GoAhead. In March, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company announced it was shifting its business model and technology strategy from a proprietary approach to an open source model. At that time, it also acquired the Avantellis product line from Emerson Network Power.
Ericsson's selection of GoAhead also is important for the OpenSAF movement, says OpenSAF President Monica Hatlen, who is a manager at Ericsson but wasn't speaking as a representative of the company. OpenSAF is an open source community project focused on developing HA applications and services that are key to mission-critical networks. It offers advantages not found with proprietary solutions, she says, allowing users to leverage know-how from the broad community of developers, thereby conserving resources and benefiting the ecosystem with faster-to-market solutions.
Switching to open source middleware is not something that can be done overnight, but as operators consider 4G deployments, it's a good time to make the switch, according to Hatlen. As the wireless industry grapples with more data demands, it's not a big leap to suggest that time-to-market is becoming more important than ever.
OpenSAF launched in January 2008. This past July, it announced the public availability of Release 4.0 of the HA middleware platform. The latest release implements all major functions of the Service Availability Forum Application Interface Specification and includes enhancements to improve scalability, as well as hardware and software management.