SCOPE Press Release
SCOPE Alliance Profiles Environmental Requirements to Address the Needs of the World Communications Equipment Market
Environmental Profile identifies key specifications for network element equipment
Piscataway, NJ, June 12, 2008 – The SCOPE Alliance, an association of leading Network Equipment Providers (NEPs), today released its Environmental Profile that delineates environmental requirements of the world telecommunications market for network element equipment. The profile will help enable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components vendors and integrators to design, build and deliver COTS components that will comply with the relevant environmental specifications.
“There are currently a number of environmental requirements defined by international standards bodies, Network Operators and even the NEPs, but to date there has not been a consolidated set of these specifications, making it virtually impossible for COTS components to comply with the requirements,” said Ron Breault, SCOPE’s Technical Co-chair. “As a leading consortium of NEPs, we set out to provide a consolidated, heavily researched and supported list of requirements in order to help COTS vendors deliver components that meet the requirements.”
The Environmental Profile addresses indoor environments and is unique in that it defines requirements for both Central Office and Network Data Center facilities. Each type of location brings a different set of challenges and requirements for the storage and usage of network equipment. SCOPE defined requirements for only these two categories in order to minimize potential COTS ecosystem fragmentation and reduce the need for NEPs to develop market specific versions of the equipment.
The profile defines parameters for location construction, power and safety as well as factors such as equipment surface and flow-through air temperatures, airborne contaminants and earthquake resistance. It is also hardware agnostic and can be used with any hardware platform such as AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA or other form factor. Additionally, SCOPE identified gaps in existing specifications for consideration by standards bodies in their specification work.
“We anticipate that this profile will substantially accelerate the development and certification of new equipment from suppliers new to the NEPs space,” added Breault.
The Requirements paper delineates a set of hardware and software virtualization requirements that describe functional and non-functional aspects of virtualization features required by the NEPs. They were generated based on a set of business and technical use cases provided by the NEPs and are intended to be used by the ecosystem providers for delivery of carrier grade virtualization features and solutions for use by the NEPs. An ecosystem provider may choose to address all or part of the virtualization requirements, depending on the elements of the ecosystem that it aims to provide and the use cases it aims to address.
The Environmental Profile: Central Offices and Network Data Centers is available free for download at: www.SCOPE-Alliance.org/docs.html.
About SCOPE Alliance
The SCOPE Alliance is an association of Network Equipment Providers aimed at accelerating the deployment of Carrier Grade Base Platforms for service provider applications. Its mission is to enable and promote the availability of open Carrier Grade Base Platforms based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software building blocks, and to promote interoperability to better serve Service Providers and consumers. For more information about the SCOPE Alliance, visit: www.SCOPE-Alliance.org.
Contact:
Lori Zielinski
503.619.0852
Nereus for SCOPE Alliance
lzielinski@nereus-worldwide.com
Charmain Williams
+1-732-465-6610
IEEE-ISTO
