(EMAILWIRE.COM, February 08, 2006 ) PORTLAND, OR –- The Service Availability™ Forum (SA Forum) and PICMG have released the HPI-to-AdvancedTCA® Mapping Specification. The mapping specification details how the SA Forum’s Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) maps to PICMG’s AdvancedTCA specification. This enables developers to use a standard method for implementing both specifications, thereby saving companies time, money and resources.

“I applaud the joint work that PICMG and the SA Forum did together to create this mapping specification, making it significantly easier for the industry to adopt HPI and AdvancedTCA,” said Tim Kober, president of the SA Forum. “The new specification enables developers to deliver solutions using PICMG and SA Forum commercial off-the-shelf building blocks.”

“The HPI specification represents a mature data model and programmatic interface to describe generic hardware platforms,” said Dick Somes, PICMG’s technical officer. “AdvancedTCA is generally perceived to be the underlying hardware platform for many HPI implementations. Thus a mapping between these two specifications is a natural outcome from these standards efforts.”

The HPI-to-AdvancedTCA Mapping Specification exposes AdvancedTCA Shelf Management functionality and data in a standard, vendor-independent manner via the SA Forum’s HPI.
By using open standards such as these, companies no longer have to develop proprietary solutions or devote resources to custom mapping between specs. This allows them to focus on their unique value-add, reduce their time-to-market and reduce lifecycle costs.

“By working together on the mapping specification, the SA Forum and PICMG have moved the telecom industry one step closer to a true open standard ecosystem,” said Brian Holden, representative of the Mountain View Alliance, a group including PICMG and the SA Forum that helps coordinate the work of specification organizations. “Prior to this new specification, the HPI could be mapped to AdvancedTCA in a number of ways which create extra work for the system integrator. The mapping specification eliminates this additional step and creates a new industry standard.”

To download the mapping specification, visit www.saforum.org/specification.

About the Service Availability Forum
The Service Availability™ Forum is a consortium of industry-leading communications and computing companies working together to foster an ecosystem that enables the use of commercial off-the-shelf building blocks in the creation of high availability network infrastructure products, systems and services. To achieve this goal, the Service Availability Forum develops and publishes high availability and management software interface specifications while promoting and facilitating their adoption by industry. Service Availability Forum membership offers the opportunity to help frame and implement the Service Availability solution. For more information about the Service Availability Forum, visit www.saforum.org.

About PICMG
Founded in 1994, PICMG is a consortium of more than 400 companies that collaboratively develops open specifications for high performance telecommunications and industrial computing applications. PICMG specifications included AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and CompactPCI. The members of the consortium have a long history of developing and using leading edge products for these industries. For information about PICMG membership or to obtain PICMG specifications, visit the PICMG Web site at www.picmg.org.

About the Mountain View Alliance
The Mountain View Alliance is a consortia of standards organizations dedicated to creating a more coordinated approach to specifications and activities around platform design. Mountain View Alliance member organizations include PICMG, the Service Availability Forum, the Network Processing Forum and RapidIO Trade Association. For more information, visit www.mountainviewalliance.org.

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Contact:
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