HP this week delivered a major platform update for its NG OSS portfolio, adding a handful of new features but more importantly adding key underlying capabilities and standards deployments that set a new baseline for future OSS feature releases.

The updates include a new 6.0 version of HP’s TeMIP fault management system and new 5.0 version of HP Service Activator Software. Also on tap: a partnership with Cisco to deliver a managed services management solution for carriers running Cisco-based IP networks.

Together, the enhancements are highlighted by the two major platform updates, “the kinds of releases that tend to live for a long period of time and set the stage for functional enhancements” down the line, said Richard Arthur, HP’s senior manager of OSS strategy.

On the TeMIP side, new platform capabilities include improved integration of fault diagnosis and resolution, Arthur said. “Customers have been telling us, if they see a pattern of things going wrong in the network, they want to be able to automate the process of determining the root cause and handing it off directly to a problem resolution process and team to resolve.”

New functionality in this area includes new pattern discovery techniques and filtering enhancements, including the introduction of a knowledge base built on real-world customer experience and expert rules, said Arthur.

“We’re seeing more and more customers measuring themselves on how well they can resolve problems,” Arthur said. “Things like: ninety percent reduction in alarms or seventy percent automat of trouble tickets.”

On the platform side of things, the new version of TeMIP includes enhanced support for emerging OSS standards, including support for OSS-through-Java interfaces and XML/SOAP, as well as web services interfaces for standards such as MTOSI, or multi-technology operations systems interface.

“If you look at next-generation OSS today, very few vendors have support for these standards,” Arthur said. “What’s interesting for operators is that these are actually getting deployed now and having a good rate of take-up in all parts of the industry.”

Finally, TeMIP has been enhanced to run in virtualized server environments and in clusters to help reduce hardware and energy costs, Arthur said.

On the service activation front, HP Service Activator Software 5.0 adds the ability to more highly automate core service activation processes while also integrating them with new built-in order management and inventory capabilities – creating a single turnkey platform to handle the entire service turn-up process. While larger telecom operators likely have different platforms for those varied functions, HP now offers smaller carriers a single, pre-integrated platform they can deploy to handle everything soup-to-nuts, Arthur said. The HP Service Activator platform includes pre-packaged solutions for VPNs, metro Ethernet and residential IP services.

Finally, HP announced the HP Service Activator Solution for Managed Services (HPSA-MSS), a version that is integrated with technologies from Cisco Systems. HPSA-MSS is a pre-packaged solution that automates the activation and management of enterprise IP-based services such as voice-over-IP, wireless LAN and security services. The offering lets operators offer to their customers network management capabilities for doing things such as adds and changes while using an outsourced managed service, Arthur said.