GoAhead Software Announces SAFfire 3.0
Company delivers unmatched support for Service Availability Forum standards
BELLEVUE, Wash. – May 12, 2009 – GoAhead® Software, the worldwide leader in open standards-based high availability middleware for mission-critical systems, today announces SAFfire 3.0. SAFfire 3.0 highlights include an unmatched implementation of the Service Availability™ Forum (SA Forum) open specifications with a spotlight on support of the Platform Management Service. Along with SAFfire 3.0, the company announces the GoAhead SA Forum Ecosystem™ (SAFE) Program and the GoAhead SA Forum Architectural Design Service. This unique combination of technology, expertise and partner ecosystem gives customers a low-risk approach for ensuring high availability of their mission-critical systems.
“High availability software is a complex, specialized discipline,” says Simon Stanley, analyst at large, Heavy Reading. “When implementing a solution, key success criteria include dedicated engineering focus, assured flexibility and a proven track-record. A COTS solution that meets these criteria, such as GoAhead SAFfire 3.0, will reduce project risk and can significantly shorten time to delivery.”
SAFfire features core functionality to monitor and manage redundant hardware and software system resources to ensure 99.999% or better availability. Millisecond, stateful failover and checkpointing to preserve application data enable customers to ensure uninterrupted service. This combined with the only comprehensive and most current support of the SA Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS) advances GoAhead’s lead over other offerings.
“In an economic time when resources must be assigned prudently and make good business sense, we are very pleased to announce SAFfire 3.0, a solution to help equipment manufacturers cost-effectively achieve the most stringent availability requirements while they focus on the application – their area of expertise,” states Dr. Asif Naseem, GoAhead president and COO.
SAFfire 3.0 highlights include the following:
- Shortened development cycles
SAFfire 3.0 provides the industry’s only implementation of the SA Forum Platform Management Service (PLM). PLM streamlines the view of a system and enables the application to more fully exploit the hardware and low-level software of the system -- blades, shelf managers, switches, power supplies, and fans. Via SA Forum Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) PLM discovers existing hardware and makes this information available in a standardized way so availability management policies can be met, simplifying development and saving time.
SAFfire 3.0 also features the capability to create, delete and manipulate objects dynamically. Dynamic reconfiguration of objects greatly simplifies the work of the development organization, so a system dynamically reconfigures when changes are made. Objects are defined once and populated system-wide, expediting application development and minimizing error.
- Greater flexibility and choice
With SAFfire 3.0, GoAhead has developed integration with leading hardware platforms such as Continuous Computing FlexTCA platforms, the IBM BladeCenter family, and RadiSys Promentum ATCA chassis and blades. SAFfire 3.0 is also pre-integrated with leading software solutions such as Tail-f Systems ConfD network configuration management, Wind River Linux and VxWorks and MontaVista Linux operating systems, and the Oracle TimesTen in-memory database. In addition, SAFfire interoperates with the IBM solidDB in-memory database. No other HA solution offers this level of choice, and having this integration available out-of-box offers compelling time savings.
With SAFfire 3.0, application developers now have access to a complete set of redundancy models – N-way, 1+1, N+1, 2N and N+M. Whether developing for a base station controller (BSC) requiring the highest levels of redundancy or a system with less stringent availability requirements, SAFfire provides the flexibility to meet an organization’s unique performance and cost requirements.
- Unmatched support of SA Forum specifications
In SAFfire 3.0 the Availability Management Framework has been updated from support for the B.02.01 AMF specification to the B.03.01 specification. All SAFfire AIS services have been updated to support newer versions of the AIS specifications. For more information, visit http://www.goahead.com/products/SAFfire/ProductBrochure.aspx.
In addition SAFfire 3.0 provides change control bundles, administrative operations, and an alarm manager that greatly facilitate the development of highly available systems and applications.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
GoAhead SAFfire 3.0 will be generally available July 2009. For additional product or pricing information, please contact GoAhead at (425) 453-1900 or visit www.GoAhead.com.
GOAHEAD ROUNDS OUT OFFERING WITH LAUNCH OF ADDITIONAL PROGRAMS
In addition to the capabilities offered in SAFfire 3.0, GoAhead rounds out the offering with the GoAhead SA Forum Architectural Design Service and the GoAhead SA Forum Ecosystem™ (SAFE) program.
With the launch of the GoAhead SA Forum Architectural Design Service, GoAhead is extending its professional services offerings with a service targeted at helping organizations define a highly available architecture leveraging the SA Forum specifications. Tailored to the customer’s unique project requirements, the GoAhead professional services team will work with an organization to write an HA Architectural Requirements and Design Document. With more than a decade of experience designing, developing and deploying HA solutions, the GoAhead team understands the challenges of implementing the SA Forum AIS specification and helps organizations avoid the cost and delays associated with flawed application design.
The GoAhead SAFE program is a partner program aimed at reducing the time required for equipment manufacturers to deliver mission critical systems and applications. By teaming with leading providers of open standards-based, COTS hardware and software, GoAhead eliminates the risk and cost associated with platform integration and validation. The program has three tiers of membership based on the level of technology integration -- Interoperate, Integrate and Innovate.
UNPARALLELED CHOICE AND INDUSTRY SUPPORT
“In order to rapidly deploy carrier-class LTE, DPI, and femtocell applications, network equipment providers are looking for tightly integrated, application-ready platforms. Our FlexTCA pre-integrated platform incorporates GoAhead SAFfire 3.0 and Trillium fault-tolerant protocols to offer a robust and highly available platform that reduces risk, cost, and complexity.”
-- Mike Coward, CTO and co-founder, Continuous Computing
“As product schedules shorten and budgets shrink, network equipment providers (NEPs) are seeking commercial off-the-shelf, standards-based offerings such as the IBM BladeCenter and GoAhead SAFfire to accelerate delivery of new converged, network products and offerings while protecting their development investments.”
-- Bruce Anthony, Distinguished Engineer and CTO, IBM NGN Systems
“After spending significant effort to tightly integrate our Promentum ATCA chassis and blades with SAFfire, we are excited to be the first “Innovate” member of the GoAhead SAFE partner program. Our highly available, application-ready platform showcases proven success, helping telecom equipment manufacturers deploy differentiating services anywhere from seven months up to one year faster than if they had not leveraged the GoAhead-RadiSys combination.”
-- Eric Gregory, ATCA product marketing manager, RadiSys Corporation
“Together with GoAhead, Tail-f Systems is pleased to offer an application-ready platform based on ConfD and SAFfire 3.0. The combination equips system developers with a powerful availability and network configuration platform that eliminates integration speed bumps and accelerates innovation.”
-- Hakan Milroth, CEO, Tail-f Systems
“As long-time partners, Wind River and GoAhead have consistently ensured interoperability of GoAhead solutions -- most recently SAFfire 3.0 -- with Wind River Linux and VxWorks solutions. The GoAhead SAFE program reinforces this effort and offers our many mutual customers a way to reduce project risk and accelerate time-to-market.”
-- Mike Langlois, general manager, Networking and Telecom Industry, Wind River
About GoAhead Software
GoAhead Software is the worldwide leader in open standards-based high availability and management middleware for carrier-grade and mission critical systems for which downtime is unacceptable. With more than 50,000 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-Lucent, LG-Nortel, and Lockheed Martin entrust GoAhead to speed time to market, lower costs and focus on differentiation. For more information, visit www.goahead.com.
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.
