Federating customer databases and governing third-party access key components of evolving carrier service equations

HP recently announced two new software products to help carriers better identify customers and deliver new services to them.

The new HP OpenCall Profile Manager takes existing telco customer databases and provides an overlay layer that helps to “federate” these previously siloed repositories of data. By bringing such data together, carriers can get a single view of the customer, making it easier to upsell new offerings and deliver personalized services, said Steve Dietch, vice president for HP OpenCall software.

“The ability to federate in real-time those previously isolated customer databases helps to provide a unified, consistent view into a customer profile,” Dietch said. “[OpenCall Profile Manager’s] focal point is sharing and providing access to that customer data without having to physically centralize it in a big data repository.”

HP accomplishes that feat via a combination of products, data modeling tools and professional services, Dietch said.

A second new product, HP Services Governance Framework, addresses the services side of the equation, providing policy, security and control mechanisms for delivering services, especially Web-delivered services, built by third-parties.

The governance framework builds on the service-oriented architecture technologies built into HP’s Service Delivery Platform 2.0. In addition to management control, the framework provides a registration portal for third-party developers to integrate new services, a change of contracts facility between applications and services, and real-time policy enforcement.

Such capabilities are important as service providers begin to open up APIs to their networks and enable more third-parties to deliver mashed-up services making use of network elements and data, Dietch said.

“Without a strong governance framework, you could end up with a fairly chaotic [development and services] environment,” he said. “Carriers need tools to manage access control, service and network policies and to offer a consistent means to BSS/OSS capabilities to third-party developers.”