SCOPE Alliance Aims for Open Specifications on Carrier Platforms

A new industry alliance has been formed by Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia and Siemens to accelerate the deployment of carrier grade base platforms for service provider applications.



The mission of the new alliance, called SCOPE, is to help, enable and promote the availability of open carrier grade base platforms based on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware / software and free open source software building blocks, and to promote interoperability to better serve Service Providers and consumers.



SCOPE will not create its own specification, but will complement the work of several industry initiatives such as PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, Service Availability Forum, Open Source Development Lab and others that have successfully created high quality open specifications that enable the creation of carrier grade base platforms.



SCOPE's initial activities will be focused on creating profiles for hardware, operating system, base platform middleware and tools suites based on Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA), Carrier Grade Linux, and SA Forum's interface specifications. SCOPE expects its first profile to be published in Q1 of 2006.



"Creating carrier grade profiles will enable the network equipment provider ecosystem to develop and manufacture hardware and software building blocks and platforms with higher volumes, thus lowering costs. Such profiles will serve to create products which include the features that are required by the telecommunications industry to bring high quality and innovative new services to consumers," said Timo Jokiaho, chairman of SCOPE.

http://www.scope-alliance.org