HP has announced an enhanced network platform to help telecom operators provide services to millions of customers. HP Service Delivery Platform (SDP) 2.0 enables operators to offer their customers greater access to convergent, multimedia, and "Web 2.0" services on their mobile devices. The platform also addresses the need for operators to increase revenue from convergent services while simultaneously reducing the cost and risk of creating such services.

HP SDP 2.0 incorporates software technologies for governance, management and quality that help service providers take full advantage of the platform's service-oriented architecture (SOA). This approach creates a unified resource layer through which multiple services communicate with underlying wireless or wired networks, third-party applications and innovative combinations of Web services known as Web 2.0 mash-ups.

As a result, HP SDP 2.0 enables operators to create converged services that blend the best of telecom, Web and IT resources. Examples are music, video and business services that personalize content delivery using network resources that show a customer's active presence on the network or his or her physical location; Web resources for access to vast stores of information, multimedia content and social communities; and IT resources such as billing, network management, and other business and operations support systems (BSS and OSS).

HP SDP 2.0 also provides service-level controls, identity management and security mechanisms that translate to a better experience for end customers. In addition, the platform is fully supported by HP consulting and integration services, which expedite deployment.

SDPs address a key shortcoming in traditional wireless, wired and broadband infrastructure, in which services tend to be in vertical "silos" – each with its own direct links to needed network resources. As new services are added, the silo-based structure becomes increasingly cumbersome, costly and a barrier to efficient integration of converged services.

HP SDP 2.0 provides a standards-based, integrated interface between wireless or wired services and the underlying network. Services applications that link to this common, unified layer automatically have shared access to all needed telecom network resources, thus eliminating inefficient duplication.

To meet the challenges of Web-based competitors – and take advantage of Web 2.0 opportunities – HP SDP 2.0 uses governance, management and quality capabilities to help operators expand their application environments to the thousands of non-telecom developers who can build personalized, content-rich services.

With HP SDP 2.0, developers also will have the ability to provide identity management, virtualized control over user profile information, and SOA mechanisms to share context information such as location, preferences and Web community affiliations.

The HP SDP 2.0 enhancements include:

• HP Third-Party Framework
• Virtual Identity and Profile (VIP) Broker
• Enterprise Service Bus
• OSS Adapters
• Service enablers
• Testing tools

More information on the HP Service Delivery Platform is available at www.hp.com/go/sdp.