Computer industry giant Hewlett-Packard Co. increased its focus on the wireless market with enhancements to a number of its integrated service platforms, including customer-care and support services that are part of the company’s “twin pillars” of the services lifecycle, and the company announced a worldwide agreement with L.M. Ericsson to deliver unified communication solutions to businesses.
HP said the upgrades affect its mobile Service Delivery Platform, which is part of the “creation and delivery pillar,” as well as its Integrated Service Management platform, which is part of the “usage and management pillar.” HP noted the enhanced mSDP gains a 2.0 designation with the addition of increased integration, security and digital rights management tools, while the ISM now includes a prepaid, real-time billing solution and an upgraded fraud management solution.
Joy King, vice president of worldwide marketing at HP’s network service provider solutions division, said the ISM platform has already proven itself with South American operator Colombia Movil, which reported a dramatic reduction in cases of fraud after implementing the platform.
HP added that the new prepaid option is part of its Content Mediation and Charging solution that will facilitate mobile data transactions between prepaid customers, the content provider and the mobile operator, while the fraud management solution is designed to protect operators from more dynamic fraud schemes that are emerging with next-generation voice and data services.
HP also announced a new mobility support service for public and private wireless local area networks targeting companies that are interested in adding mobility to their work force. The service includes five offerings that HP said will help companies design, build, manage, own or maintain their WLAN network, including technical support; a mobility application IT help desk; remote monitoring and performance reporting; a mobility end-user help desk; and mobility device management.
While geared toward enterprise customers, HP noted the enhanced product offerings are an attempt by the company to what it termed personalize mobile usage and provide operators with a less expensive alternative to proprietary systems.
“To drive mobility mainstream, we must `make mobile personal,”‘ explained Sebastiano Tevarotto, vice president and general manager of network service provider solutions at HP Services, adding “We are helping mobile operators evolve away from cumbersome, proprietary and costly networks toward open, modular service platforms that streamline the services lifecycle to the point that operators can profitably deliver hundreds of mobile services.”
In addition to its own offerings, HP announced an agreement with Ericsson to deliver converged communications solutions for enterprise customers that will integrate traditional analog voice systems and IP-based systems for data and voice, manage on-premise and mobile traffic, and link the private company network with the public operator network. HP noted wireless operators are expected to play a role in the solution as mobile voice and data calls can be routed through a central switch that is either IP-based or circuit-switched, allowing flat-rate bulk-billing arrangements between carriers and their enterprise customers.
