HP leverages SOA for wireless service providers

Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday is unveiling its Service Delivery Platform (SDP) 2.0, which is geared to help wireless service providers take advantage of SOA and offer Web 2.0 services.

Offering capabilities for governance and management, SDP 2.0 creates a unified resource layer,enabling multiple services to communicate with underlying wireless or wired networks, third-party applications, and Web 2.0-based mashups, HP said. Operators can offer converged services that blend telecom, Web, and IT resources, such as music, video, and business services that personalize content delivery.

"The business problem for operators is that many of the services they deliver today come from third parties," said Peter Dragunas, a director in the HP Communications, Media and Entertainment group. Providers must manage a high volume of these services, he said.

SDP 2.0 takes telecommunications assets and turns them into Web services, which are exposed through the Internet to third parties. HP puts governance in place around this to determine policies.

"What we're seeing is an opportunity to provide SOA transformation solutions to very specific businesses and industries as well as other areas," said David Butler, chief SOA evangelist at HP. SDP 2.0 currently is for wireless service providers,but future product offerings could extend to areas such as financial services and supply chain management.

"I think that HP is delivering the appropriate set of tools, given the requirements to merge IT and network worlds in the next generation of [the] telco service delivery environment," said analyst Brian Partride, of Yankee Group, in an e-mail.

"I like that they have included SOA testing as part of the offering," he added. HP's SOA testing tools and VIP (Virtual Identity and Profile) Broker, for single-point access to siloed information, break new ground in SDP 2.0, according to Partridge.

Also featured in SDP 2.0 are service-level controls, identity management, and security mechanisms. An integrated interface is provided between wireless or wired services and the underlying network. Developers will be able to provide identity management, virtualized control over user profile information, and SOA mechanisms to share context information such as locations, preferences, and Web community affiliations.

HP SDP 2.0 enhancements include:

* HP Third-party Framework, featuring the HP SOA Systinet service registry (formerly Mercury Systinet), for defining services, and HP SOA Manager, for Web services policy enforcement. Also included is the HP Select Access identity manager for lifecycle governance and security capabilities.

* VIP Broker, using SOA technologies to provide virtualized single-point access and control to customer information stored in services silos. Real-time personalization is provided, as is the ability to gather business intelligence and context data to support new business models based on advertising or location-specific bundles.

* Testing tools, delivered through HP Service Test and Service Test Manager products. These were formerly Mercury technologies.

* OSS (Operations Support System) Adapters, to offer a full view of the network, network management, and service management. A single console enables administrators to ensure compliance with service-level agreements.

* Service enablers, such as HP OpenCall software, to bridge current telecom environments to Internet Protocol Multi-Media Subsystem and Internet Protocol Television.