Motorola launches open-source High Availability Operating Environment

Posted Mar 12, 2007 18:19 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

This is more significant than it seems - Linux is quietly invading the domain of network devices (switches, routers, softswitches, IMS servers, wireless basestation controllers (BSCs), etc), on the back of the AdvancedTCA (ATCA) architecture, which is a chassis+blade hardware architecture that enables telecoms vendors such as Motorola, AlcatelLucent and Nortel to build standardised kit with interchangeable parts.

Such standard hardware architectures are commonplace in the PC/server world, but brand new in telco-land because traditionally such kit is built with specisalised chassis, backplanes, buses, and so on. ATCA and its related standards are almost 100% deployed with Linux (the Carrier Grade Linux variant, implemented by MontaVista and others) and are going to drive an enormous market for telco-based Linux kit over the next few years.

Just as with PC architecture, Linux will be more easily deployed on ATCA than elsewhere, even though it's incredibly portable - the 'system integrator' (layer of vendors who sell to Motorola/Nortel etc) pulls together the chassis, blades, mezzanine cards (MicroTCA, one of the ATCA standards) along with Linux, OpenSAF, and so on. Somewhat like a white box PC vendor but much more specialised, with differing blades and mezzanine cards for different parts of the telco hardware market.

This is actually far more significant than Vyatta's more easily comprehended open source routing products - in fact, Vyatta will either be getting into the ATCA ecosystem to deliver their products, or should be, in my view. The bottom line is that Linux is going to be used quite widely as an embedded OS in telco-oriented network devices (so-called 'network elements') in the next few years.