BusinessWire
June 19, 2007 04:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

GoAhead Software Offers First Ready-to-Deploy Service Availability Forum AIS Implementation

Functionally Complete High Availability and Management Middleware Helps Customers Achieve Faster Time to Revenue and Focus on Innovation

NXTcomm 2007
Booth #3751

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GoAhead® Software, the worldwide leader in open standards-based high availability and systems management middleware for carrier-grade and mission critical systems, today announced GoAhead SAFfire™ 2.0. This new product includes the sophisticated high availability (HA) and management capabilities found in the company’s flagship product, GoAhead SelfReliant® – proven on nearly 20,000 deployments around the world. Additionally, SAFfire features the most comprehensive implementation to date of the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) Application Interface Specification (AIS). With this release of SAFfire 2.0, GoAhead accelerates AIS into both the telecom and defense marketplaces, as illustrated by early evaluations from a leading provider of wireless and wireline voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, a leading provider of broadband multimedia infrastructure for triple play (voice, video and data) services and a multi-billion dollar defense contractor.

“With more than a decade of experience designing, building and deploying HA solutions, our company is uniquely positioned to deliver an AIS implementation that meets the quality and performance goals our customers have come to expect from GoAhead,” states Jim Ewel, GoAhead CEO and chairman. “GoAhead SAFfire is the first AIS implementation that is suitable for more than a test bed of the standard and is ready for deployment,” Ewel continues.

“The early interest in GoAhead SAFfire exemplifies the value TEMs and NEPs are realizing by utilizing commercial-off-the-shelf components, enabling them to focus resources on specific product differentiation,” states Eric Heikkila, lead analyst for Venture Development Corporation's Embedded Hardware Systems practice. “GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 is a comprehensive and complete AIS implementation, including the Availability Management Framework and seven of the eight published services,” continues Heikkila.

Additionally, carrier-grade network infrastructure providers increasingly leverage standards-based COTS solutions as a strategy to gain a competitive advantage.

“Nokia Siemens Networks is a strong proponent of open specifications such as those published by the SA Forum,” says Timo Jokiaho, head of platform industry initiatives of Nokia Siemens Networks. “With multiple implementations like that of GoAhead’s SAFfire 2.0, adoption of the specifications should be accelerated, which in turn will accelerate and enhance the viability of the COTS ecosystem for carrier-grade base platforms based on open specifications,” Jokiaho continues.

“As a key contributor to open standard initiatives, including the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum), Nortel welcomes SA Forum standards-based middleware such as that offered through SAFfire – which extends a well established ecosystem for COTS carrier-grade platforms,” said Sita Lowman, director, Nortel Carrier Network Marketing. “These products help network equipment providers develop applications using standards-compliant programming interfaces in the process of creating compelling, quick-to-market, cost-effective new services.”

“As one of the founding members of the SA Forum, Intel has long supported open standards such as HPI, AIS and AdvancedTCA,” says Anthony Neal-Graves, GM of Intel's Modular Communications Platform Division and Marketing and Platform Programs. “Companies such as GoAhead, which are shipping complete implementations of these important standards, will help accelerate the adoption of modular communications platform building blocks.”

The SA Forum develops and publishes software interface specifications to abstract HA middleware from both service applications (AIS) and hardware (Hardware Platform Interface, also referred to as HPI) making each independent of the other. A long-time supporter of the SA Forum, as exemplified in its open standards-based products, GoAhead is a co-founding member of SA Forum and its CTO and COO, Dr. Asif Naseem, currently serves as president. GoAhead has long supported HPI and other standards in its products; GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 supports AIS B.02.

“With wide industry adoption of HPI, TEMs and NEPs are realizing the value that open standards-based service availability solutions offer,” says Magnus Karlson, SA Forum technical chair. “Products such as GoAhead SAFfire, which features virtually all of the AIS services, are fundamental in enabling a similar eco-system for such products.”

“The SCOPE Alliance promotes an ecosystem of both suppliers and consumers of COTS building blocks based on open standards like those of the SA Forum,” says Paul Steinberg of Motorola and technical co-chair for SCOPE Alliance. “Implementations such as GoAhead SAFfire are key to accelerating the adoption of SA Forum AIS. This is a significant step not only for GoAhead, but also for the industry.”

GoAhead Software continues to offer SelfReliant, the industry-leading HA and management solution, in addition to the new SAFfire product. Both product lines have roadmaps to future versions, and will be supported by GoAhead’s experienced support staff.

SAFfire 2.0: NEW FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY

GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 includes all of the sophisticated HA and systems management capabilities found in GoAhead SelfReliant, plus full support of SA Forum AIS. Highlights include the following:

* Support for the SA Forum Application Interface Specification

For equipment manufacturers aiming to achieve standards compliance, GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 supports the SA Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS B.02 and some services featured in AIS B.03). Specific functionality supported includes the Availability Management Framework, Information Model Management Service, Cluster Membership Service, Checkpoint Service, Event Service, Message Service, Log Service and Notification Service. For details on these services, please visit http://www.saforum.org/specification/AIS_Information.

* Sophisticated high availability and systems management capabilities

GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 features a core base of technology tried and tested for more than a decade in nearly 20,000 deployments worldwide to date. This proven and comprehensive functionality lowers project risk and enables shorter development cycles. Highlights include system modeling; discovery; monitoring; platform management; hot swap management; alarm management; high performance with millisecond stateful failover; fast messaging and low CPU usage; embedded systems management; and a foundational cross-platform, multi-threaded kernel.

* Platform and operating system independence

Like GoAhead SelfReliant, GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 offers platform independence, enabling equipment manufacturers choice, flexibility and the ability to quickly adapt to technology changes. SAFfire supports multiple leading hardware platforms (ATCA, cPCI, BladeCenter, MicroTCA, etc.), operating systems (Carrier-Grade Linux, VxWorks, Solaris and Windows) and architectures such as Intel Xeon® Processor family and other leading CPU architectures.

* Pre-integration and pre-validation with leading hardware platforms

The work to integrate standards-based building blocks is not trivial. GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 features pre-integration and pre-validation with leading hardware platforms, enabling equipment manufacturers to realize the benefits of an application-ready platform, while focusing resources on innovation. Pre-integration of GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 is offered on IBM BladeCenter T, RadiSys Promentum ATCA and Performance Technologies Advanced Managed Platforms. The integration highlights platform management and comprehensive high availability and system management achieved via SA Forum HPI.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

GoAhead SAFfire 2.0 will be available in Q3 2007. For additional product or pricing information, please contact Michael Nitso, director of worldwide sales at 425-453-1900.

GOAHEAD DEMONSTRATING AT NXTCOMM 2007

GoAhead Software will be demonstrating SAFfire 2.0 NXTcomm at McCormick Place in Chicago, June 19-21, in booth #3751. Additionally, the company will be offering a product briefing on Wednesday, June 20, at 5:00 p.m., at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, CC 22 AB. To attend, or for more information, please email rmiller@vtm-inc.com.

INDUSTRY SUPPORT FOR GOAHEAD SAFfire 2.0

IBM

“The telecommunications industry adoption of COTS technology will accelerate with open standards solutions like GoAhead SAFfire and IBM BladeCenter delivering new levels of availability and reliability,” said Jim Pertzborn, vice president telecommunications, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “By utilizing this COTS-based solution, telecom providers can reduce the time required to introduce new services, reduce total costs and, more importantly, improve end-user customer experience.”

Motorola

“Motorola is a strong supporter of standards organizations such as the SA Forum and SCOPE, and we look forward to examining the GoAhead AIS implementation for potential use in our future platforms,” says Bruce Stone, senior vice president, Motorola Homes & Network Mobility.

Performance Technologies

“Performance Technologies integrates GoAhead Software to provide equipment manufacturers with standards-based platform solutions for applications requiring high availability and high performance,” says Ed Bizari, vice president of marketing, Performance Technologies. “We are excited to offer solutions centered on Linux-based Advanced Managed Platforms and GoAhead SAFfire as a means of offering better integrated platforms and, in turn, ensuring equipment developers meet time-to-market demands, cost-effectively.”

RadiSys

“Customers today are looking for turn-key, application-ready platforms based on open standards such as AdvancedTCA and SA Forum AIS. As a leader in open modular platforms and the first to market with the 10Gigabit Promentum™ ATCA solution, Radisys has worked with GoAhead for several years now to provide such integrated solutions to customers,” explains Anthony Ambrose, vice president and general manager, Radisys Corporation. “Delivery of a functionally complete version of AIS has been something that the market has been waiting for and we anticipate broad adoption with the Promentum platform.”

Solid Information Technologies

“GoAhead and Solid have already delivered integrated solutions to customers such as BridgePort Networks, enabling them to offer innovative solutions in a timely and cost-efficient manner,” states Alain Couder, president and CEO of Solid. “Widespread adoption of the SA Forum AIS standard in SAFfire 2.0 will shorten the time to market for vendors and customers alike. We applaud GoAhead’s leadership in this area. We are confident initiatives such as this one will be beneficial, not only for our embeddable, carrier grade database – solidDB, but especially for our customers by providing a standard approach for implementing high availability solutions that encompass the entire technology stack.”

Wind River

“Our network equipment customers need high availability and management middleware they can trust,” says Glenn Seiler, General Manager, Linux Solutions, Wind River. “We partner with GoAhead Software to deliver solutions integrated with Wind River carrier-grade Linux platforms because of GoAhead’s track record of delivering stable and proven software that adheres to the open standards our customers demand.”

ABOUT GOAHEAD

GoAhead Software is the worldwide leader in open standards-based high availability and systems management middleware for carrier-grade and mission-critical systems for which downtime is unacceptable. With nearly 20,000 deployments, GoAhead has the only proven, open standards-based solution, reducing risk so you can meet time and cost requirements. GoAhead’s leadership and long commitment to Service Availability Forum standards prevent vendor lock-in and protect your investments over time. Every day, industry leaders such as Motorola, Alcatel, Italtel, Lockheed Martin and Honeywell entrust GoAhead to speed time to market, lower costs and focus on differentiation. For more information, visit www.goahead.com. For press information, contact Lacy Williams at 425-468-5417 or lwilliams@goahead.com.

GoAhead Software is an Associate Member with the Intel® Communications Alliance, a community of communications and embedded developers and solution providers. For more information, please visit www.intel.com/go/ica.

GoAhead, SelfReliant and SAFfire are registered trademarks or trademarks of GoAhead Software, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder.

Intel is a trademark of Intel in the United States and other countries.