Motorola Releases Open Source Middleware

Motorola  announced Thursday that it has released version 1 of an open source project aimed at providing a standard for high-availability middleware for telecommunications hardware manufacturers and ISVs. The company also disclosed it has taken the first steps toward turning the code over to a consortium of interested parties.

Dubbed OpenSAF for the Service Availability Forum (SAF), which developed the initial specification, the software supports the SAF’s Application Interface Specification, or AIS.

While the OpenSAF software was originally designed to provide high-availability technology for use in telecommunications products, Motorola sees other applications including in networks of clustered computers inside enterprise computing environments.

Additionally, the software is operating system “agnostic,” although initial implementations are likely to be built on Linux.

“The big telecommunications vendors all have multiple versions of [their own] high-availability middleware,” John Fryer, director of technology marketing for embedded communications computing at Motorola, told internetnews.com. “The objective is to get people to move away from building proprietary platforms,” he added.

Motorola first announced the code project in February. While the consortium is yet to be formed, initial members will include Ericsson, HP, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sun Microsystems, according to Motorola statements. The group hopes to formally incorporate by October, Fryer said.

Although there are other implementations of the SAF’s AIS, notably OpenAIS, the base spec does not specify all the needed services – services that OpenSAF provides, Fryer said. In addition, some competing projects are commercial in nature.

“There was a danger of fragmentation,” he added. Therefore, Motorola decided to implement its version as open source and to turn it over to a consortium for stewardship going forward.

“[This way], we can drive toward a de facto standard as an open source project.”

The code is available for download at OpenSAF.org.