Service Availability: Principles and Practice

Preface

How This Book Came About

Maria's Story

I joined the Service Availability (SA) Forum in 2005 with the mandate of representing Ericsson in the efforts of the SA Forum Technical Working Group (TWG) to define the Software Management Framework. This is where I met Francis and the representatives of other companies working on the different specifications. The standardization has been going on already for several years and I had a lot to learn and catch up with. Unfortunately there was very little documentation available besides the specifications themselves, which of course were not the easiest introduction to the subject.

Throughout the discussions it became even more obvious that there was an enormous ‘tribal knowledge’—as someone termed it—at the base of the specifications. This knowledge was not written anywhere, not documented in any form. One could pick it up gradually once he or she started to decipher the acronym ridden discussions flying high in the room and on the email reflectors. There were usually only a handful who could keep up with these conversations at the intensity that was typical at these discussions. For newcomers they were intimidating to say the least. This was an issue for the SA Forum from the beginning and for the years to come even though there was an Educational Working Group with the mandate to prepare training materials. Many TWG members felt that it would be good to write a book on the subject, but with everyone focusing on the specifications themselves ...