The Application Interface Specification (AIS) standardizes the interface between Service Availability Forum compliant High Availability (HA) middleware and service applications.

AIS Benefits:

• Reduced time to market and development costs
• Enhanced portability and integration capabilities
• Improved scalability for fault monitoring and management
• Increased resources focused on innovation of solutions
• Limits technology risk through choice of compatible COTS components

Broadly speaking, the AIS addresses a number of key dimensions of service availability middleware:

• An Availability Management Framework (AMF) defines the essential capability that coordinates redundant resources within a cluster to eliminate potential single points of failure.
• The Information Model Management (IMM) defines such a consistent information system model and provides a cluster-wide mechanism to access, manage and control these managed objects.
• A broad set of APIs are specified that define core services required to implement a highly available system that ensures service availability even in the presence of hardware or software failures.
• The Software Management Framework (SMF) enables system developers to create capabilities to manage various software components within the system.