Service Availability Forum Grows

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Service Availability™ Forum, an industry coalition of premier communications and computing companies, today announced the addition of seven new members – growing to a total of 29 members in 2003. The Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) drives industry adoption of open interface specifications that will benefit independent software vendors and equipment, platform and service providers. SA Forum’s growth underscores the industry-wide movement from proprietary systems to an open, commercial-off-the-shelf production model.

The seven new members, ranging from leading service provider vendors to data management software developers and telecommunications equipment manufacturers, underline the growing support for the SA Forum. Each company brings invaluable knowledge to SA Forum and strong understanding of the communications and computing industry. Together, new and existing SA Forum members create and promote open programming interface specifications that will help facilitate the fast delivery of dependable, differentiated, cost-effective communications infrastructure.

“The addition of these industry leaders demonstrates SA Forum’s drive and the industry’s commitment to promote the open Service Availability specifications,” said Manfred Reitenspiess, president of the Service Availability Forum. “SA Forum depends on its members’ domain expertise to create open specifications for industry-wide adoption that will ultimately accelerate time-to-market and lower the cost of developing highly available solutions for communications equipment and applications.”

Newest members to join the SA Forum include Oracle Corporation, Ericsson, American MegaTrends, Phoenix Technologies, Augmentix Corporation, Clovis Solutions and OSA Technologies. The SA Forum welcomes additional industry participants interested in developing open specifications and promoting industry-wide adoption.

During this period of growth, the SA Forum now includes companies headquartered in the Asia Pacific region, Europe and North America. This continued momentum underscores the universal support for and global collaboration underway to create the open, carrier-grade specifications that meet the needs of the communications and computing community worldwide.

“The growth of the Service Availability Forum indicates the premium that companies are placing on service quality,” said Reitenspiess. “As Internet and mobile communications and commerce become indispensable, end customers are demanding less interruptions and better service. Our members realize the best solution to address this problem quickly and cost-effectively is through the broad adoption of open standards.”

Service Availability Forum