MWA: HP proffers answer to the SDP question

DALLAS--Get ready to add one more “2.0” designation to your lexicon. The industry is abuzz with terms such as Web 2.0 and Telco 2.0. Now, with a new service delivery solution that HP says bridges the gap between them, we have SDP 2.0.

HP says the service delivery platform it announced this week integrates the network and IT domains in a way that enables telecom service providers to offer greater access to new multimedia and Web 2.0 services on their mobile devices.

Based on a service-oriented architecture, the HP SDP incorporates software technologies for governance, management and quality. HP has created a unified resource layer through which multiple services communicate with underlying wireless or wired networks, third-party applications and combinations of web services.

“As the SDP has become more mainstream over the last year, we saw the need to improve the components around management,” said Peter Dragunas, director of network domain for HP Communications, Media and Entertainment. “That’s really where this new SDP is focused—on improving the governance, management and quality of service delivery implementations

Three years in development, the platform begins to address the next important intersection between communications, media and entertainment companies. It uses resources from different domains to create new services. For example, it uses network resources for exposing the active presence and location of customers on the network; IT resources such as billing, network management, and other business and operations support systems; and web resources to tap into stores of information, and affiliation with multimedia content and social communities—something for which Dragunas said a big hole has existed in SDPs.

It also provides service-level controls, identity management and security mechanisms.

What HP has added to this new platform is a Third Party Framework that uses the HP SOA Systinet and SOA Manager along with Select Access to provide lifecycle governance and security. This includes network abstraction, third-party developer access and control, and OSS/BSS integration.

“Once you have the governance in place, you can use it to manage services more efficiently and apply policies for the right level of service and quality,” Dragunas said. “You don’t want some third party flooding your network with messages and jamming your customers.”

HP also added a Virtual Identity and Profile Broker that uses SOA technologies to provide virtualized, single-point access and control to customer information stored in disparate services silos, which is where its personalization capabilities come from.

“Today operators do not share much information about customers with third parties. But there is a lot of information operators have in their systems that would allow them to more intelligently deliver services,” Dragunas said. “The Virtual Identity and Profile Broker solves this by using SOA technologies to provide a single point of access to customer data.”

Also new is an Enterprise Service Bus that HP says bridges the network and IT resources including operational and billing systems. New OSS adapters and service enablers such as HP OpenCall link service delivery with the IMS environment.

One of the more important new features addresses something HP says no other SDPs have: service testing and service test management. HP has enlisted its performance and quality products into the SDP environment as well as its methodologies and best practices and says it can reduce service-testing costs by up to 50%.