Communications Platforms Trade Association Completes First InteropFest

BEAVERTON, Oregon – November 27, 2006 – The Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA), an association of communications platform and building block providers, today announced that it completed its first InteropFest. The event provided a confidential environment for the CP-TA community to demonstrate structured testing to industry profiles, starting with the SCOPE Alliance profile based on PICMG's AdvancedTCA specification.

During the event, CP-TA hosted stations for thermal, manageability and data transport interoperability testing. For the first time, CP-TA utilized industry-harmonized test tools that are currently in development, with the first tools scheduled to be released in December.

“The test tools were well received by the participants,” said Nirlay Kundu, CP-TA Compliance Working Group Chair. “The testing unearthed compliance issues that vendors will be able to address as they move towards full CP-TA certification. Each vendor's test results are confidential and are only distributed to the vendor.”

“This InteropFest is the first step on our roadmap to complete certification for interoperable building blocks,” said Shlomo Pri-Tal, CP-TA Chairman. “Next steps include the release of our Interoperability Compliance Document and Test Procedure Manual that will set the stage for self-compliance testing in January 2007. We also intend to have a 3rd party certification lab in full operation by Q4 of next year.”

The next CP-TA InteropFest is scheduled for June 11-14, 2007 in Chicago, and participation is open to CP-TA members. CP-TA welcomes all companies that support the CP-TA mission to join as members. Membership information is available at www.cp-ta.org/join.

About the Communications Platforms Trade Association

The Communications Platforms Trade Association is a global organization of 27 communications platform and building block providers whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of SIG-governed, open specification-based communication platforms by certifying interoperable building blocks. For more information about CP-TA, visit www.cp-ta.org.