February 8, 2006 Portland, OR -- The Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) and PICMG have released the HPI-to-AdvancedTCA mapping specification, which details how the SA Forum's Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) maps to PICMG's AdvancedTCA specification, thus providing developers with a standard method for implementing both specifications.

"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," remarks 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," adds 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."

According to the organizations, 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. The groups say that by using open standards such as these, companies no longer have to develop proprietary solutions or devote resources to custom mapping between specs.

"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," comments 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, go to www.saforum.org/specification