News
Motorola Developing High-Availability W2K Systems for Telecom OEMs
- By Scott Bekker
- 05/17/2001
Motorola Computer Group announced plans this week to extend its specialized line of five-nines, high-availability servers and hardening software for telecom OEMs with support for the Windows 2000 platform by Q3.
Charles deTranaltes, Motorola's product marketing manager for HA-OS, says the decision demonstrates Microsoft Corp.'s improving reputation for reliability with the Windows 2000 release.
"That's what our customers told us they wanted. In the enterprise market, the IP call center customers screamed, 'We want Windows 2000 high availability,'" deTranaltes says.
The systems are sold to telecom OEMs who develop voice messaging, Integrated Voice Response and IP-PBX applications on top of them and sell a complete package to customers.
Motorola launched its high-availability systems in August 2000 running only on Linux. The company announced Wednesday that it will add LynxOS and Windows 2000 versions later this year.
The Motorola systems essentially exist as two servers within one 12U chassis. Two domains coexist in the server, each with a host processor and six I/O card slots. The host processors exchange state and database information, allowing the systems to approach fault tolerance if the application provider chooses to write the application that way.
Motorola layers its own software between the operating system and hardware, in the form of hardened drivers, and between the application and the operating system.
"We haven't done anything to the Windows kernel. It is the Windows 2000 Server (or Advanced Server) off the shelf," deTranaltes says.
Motorola plans deliveries to early adopters in June, with a production release scheduled for the third quarter. –
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.