SCOPE Alliance

OpenSAF is an open source project established to develop a base platform middleware consistent with Service Availability™ Forum (SA Forum™) specifications, under the LGPLv2.1 license. The OpenSAF Foundation was established by leading communications and enterprise computing companies to facilitate the OpenSAF Project and to accelerate the adoption of the OpenSAF code base in commercial products.

The objective of the OpenSAF project is to develop code that the industry can use in commercial products and accelerate the broad adoption of an SA Forum compliant operating environment. The goals of the OpenSAF Project are as follows:

• Create an open source implementation of high availability base platform middleware which is aligned with the SA Forum specifications
• Develop the necessary additional complementary services required to deploy and manage software
• Contribute to the development of SA Forum specifications by proposing enhancements implemented in the OpenSAF project
• Establish a broadly adopted high availability operating environment that can be leveraged by computing technology companies, NEPs and other industries requiring high availability and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) o Utilize an open source licensing model not tied to any commercial implementation

Undertaking the development of carrier grade base platform middleware is a huge and complex job because of the large amount of code required and the multitude of options in the open specifications that define these platforms. Together, these issues often result in fragmentation, increased cost and delayed product availability across the industry.

However the SCOPE Alliance makes the job of organizations such as OpenSAF easier. The SCOPE Alliance and its network equipment provider (NEP) members have worked together to define profiles (subsets) in the SA Forum specifications for middleware, along with identifying gaps which would normally be barriers for adoption. Through reviewing the SA Forum specifications, SCOPE has defined profiles and identified gaps for areas such as High Availability (HA) Services, Hardware Management, Software Management (including software lifecycle management and live software upgrade), and Basic Security.

By publishing these profiles and gaps, SCOPE outlines where these barriers can be removed, meaning the industry is more likely to adopt middleware specifications and standards as well as ensure operating systems are compliant with organizations such as the SA Forum. It also enables organizations like OpenSAF to ensure these profiles and gaps are addressed in their own releases.

“SCOPE is very good at making recommendations on the direction organizations, such as OpenSAF, should take and the roadmap their own solutions should follow,” said Alan Meyer, President of OpenSAF Foundation. “SCOPE addresses issues where the industry feels elements are missing from specifications such as the SA Forum, as well as manufacturers’ proprietary solutions, and provides a good environment to discuss what is needed for the overall industry to evolve.”

Meyer continued, “There is a very symbiotic relationship between all the organizations involved in open specifications and a healthy dialogue between all groups. These include The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), the Linux Foundation’s Carrier Grade Linux Group (LF- CGL), the Service Availability Forum (SAF), Open SAF and, of course, the SCOPE Alliance. Through cross pollination, we all work together to ensure specifications and standards all advance and interoperate, clearly driving towards the same goals. Until organizations like SCOPE were formed, all manufacturers had their own set of requirements for developing solutions, which were all different. In the past nobody came out and took a holistic view of the whole industry to review what was really needed. By looking at the entire ecosystem and common elements within it, SCOPE has helped evolve the telecom industry by identifying gaps and profiles in specifications and standards, benefitting the whole industry.”

“SCOPE brings equipment manufacturers together so they can agree on the necessities within standards and specifications and then adopt these recommendations. SCOPE’s middleware looks at a very broad set of things that need attention and as an organization Open SAF have prioritized the most important areas that are part of our ecosystem. One big item that stands out for us is SCOPE’s gap analysis for software management, which looks at ways that software in equipment can be effectively upgraded and downgraded. SCOPE provides very clear recognition on this within an operating environment and helped us develop our own releases accordingly.” “As the OpenSAF community grows we are now in position to move forward and start to incorporate some SCOPE’s middleware gaps into our code. Release 3, which was released in June 2009, was the first of our releases to embrace SCOPE’s gap analysis for middleware.”