Telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs), network equipment providers (NEPs) and service providers face rising demands to increase services, faster and with fewer resources. The Service Availability Forum has developed specifications for standardizing hardware access, through the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) and for applications operating in a high-availability environment through the Application Interface Specification. GoAhead Software and IBM have teamed to create an integrated, application-ready platform for telecommunications based on Service Availability Forum AIS and HPI specifications and other open standard specifications. This session will provide an introduction to HPI, the standard programmatic interface that enables management middleware applications to monitor and control platform hardware, as well as the steps taken to achieve an application ready platform. Highlights include comprehensive HA and platform management capabilities such as resource discovery and system model instantiation, shelf manager integration, alarm management, hot swap management and integration with IBM BladeCenter HT management capabilities. See how this pre-integrated, pre-validated application ready platform based on Service Availability Forum standards is significantly increasing TEMs', NEPs' and telecommunications services providers' ability to increase availability of services quicker, reduce costs, and focus on differentiation.