On the road to IMS: HLR consolidation
transcript

Christine Bentsen: Hi, this is Christine Bentsen, for OpenCall Podcasts. Today's topic is HLR Consolidation. HLR Consolidation is a top-of-mind issue for telecom service providers as they prepare for IMS and next-generation services. To discuss this topic I have on the phone with me two HP experts from the telecom space—Bob Chenal and Alex Petsos. Bob is a Worldwide Solution Marketing Manager focusing on subscriber data management. Alex focuses on service profile elements of the OpenCall portfolio.

So, to get started – Alex, what are the major challenges or issues that HLR Consolidation addresses?

Alex Petsos: I think there are a number of issues facing service providers today and a logical starting point in addressing those is the HLR Consolidation that we are talking about and typically those issues exist on a number of fronts. You have operational aspects of this. How do I operate and maintain, administer my network in the most cost-efficient way while also delivering the best quality of service and the best number of services to end-user subscribers like all of us. And consolidation, HLR Consolidation, really sits in the middle of that. It's where all the subscriber information lies in existing networks today and it's also a logical trigger point for the evolution to IMS or next generation networks.

Christine Bentsen: I see. So this is the roadmap that HP talks about? Consolidate, Converge, Innovate?

Alex Petsos: Yeah. It's segmenting activities into consolidation activities, then convergent activities and then service innovation activities and each tends to have distinct elements or initiatives within them but they are not necessarily exclusive of each other. We are finding a number of customers who want to string some of these together maybe to deliver some end value to the user—maybe new services earlier—while leveraging operational efficiencies. Let's say the consolidation and even bringing other network types or the convergence of voice and data that the consolidation element bring. Bob, you may want to comment here.

Bob Chenal: A lot of service providers out there have grown through absorbing multiple businesses and consolidating from a business level so they have multiple networks and they may well have different subscriber data platforms like HLRs in their mobile network that could be vastly simplified. And we've helped customers do that very thing so the savings that they have from an operation standpoint, once they do simplify and streamline, allows them to position themselves to the kind of convergent applications that they are developing really right now or will be fielding through the use of IMS technology.

Christine Bentsen: I see. So Alex touched on how, and you did too as well, how HLRC is good for service providers. What does HLRC bring to the end-user?

Bob Chenal: I think the, you know, what customers recognize is the quality of service ultimately. A lot of the functions that are provided by an HLR are very, very fundamental. Subscriber data is the blood, if you will, that, you know, pumps through the network and if the system that is applying various elements in your network goes away, well your service goes out. So if your overall infrastructure again is complicated because maybe you've got multiple networks that you are dealing with from different legacy companies prior to business consolidation, then you may have a lot of difficulty keeping the network running with the levels of up time that you really want. So not only does HP provide solutions that can do the consolidation, once you've consolidated you've got to consolidate on something that's extremely reliable because, you know, you are probably coming from, say, 20, 30 different HLRs down to just a few nodes and if you lose one of those, well, then there's exposure there and HP has a platform solution to get exactly at that issue providing the kind of levels of fault tolerance that are required in that circumstance.

So to the end user, a lot of what happens in the HLR is, you know, is hidden from their view as it should be, right? Customers want reliable service and that's what this does.

Alex Petsos: I would build on Bob's statement as we move forward and we look at evolution to IMS or next generation networks, and then what we have from a subscribers standpoint is the delivery of new and innovative services, linking those services, enabling things like user communities, facilitating and lifestyles and work styles of the subscribers, and if you have a network that is unwieldy and kind of a mish-mash of equipment to begin with, it's very difficult to get to that end state and HLR Consolidation is an initial step in cleaning up and getting to what we call the "killer environment" or that environment that really facilitates the rapid introduction and aggregation of new services for the end-user.

Christine Bentsen: So in a way it's cleaning house so you can prepare the way for IMS.

Alex Petsos: Exactly. It's got the near-term, operational and quality of service benefits that Bob clearly described and that it is also the springboard towards the next generation service delivery and convergence and service innovation that we talked about of the future.

Christine Bentsen: I see.

Bob Chenal: The other way that an HLR manifests itself is really in the amount of time that it takes to set up a call, that time that you wait after you dial the number to reach your destination and typically, in regular wired networks, right, people expect to be connected within just a few seconds, five seconds or so. In the wireless industry it's a little bit different because people had a greater tolerance or the expectation was set early on that it might take, oh, maybe 20 seconds or so to connect but with so many people now relying on cell phones, some relying only on cell phones, that bar is going to be raised in a sense that call set-up time is going to be more important.

So if you have a subscriber database that can't handle the load, that can't scale, right, you are going to not be able to reduce that call set-up time. There's a lot of components that make up the overall, you know, amount of time that it takes to set up a call but the HLR is critical in that and so scaling is very important. And, again, if we are talking about consolidation, that means we are taking many of these nodes and compressing them into just a few and, therefore, a lot more subscribers supported on an individual node and that node better scale because it's pointless to try and consolidate if the end result is oh, my gosh, the call set-up time has increased dramatically.

Christine Bentsen: Does HP have a lot of experience in consolidation projects?

Alex Petsos: Essentially we've been in the business, the HLR from HP has been in the market for about 12 years, maybe a bit over that now, and in reality, almost every one of our deployments is a consolidation of some sort, right? We typically go into an existing network. There's an incumbent HLR. With the amount of acquisition and merger activity that's been going on lately, sometimes those environments have multiple suppliers for those HLRs which cause problems in and of themselves and so we have generated quite a bit of experience over the years in helping work with customers. I think, as Bob mentioned earlier, going from a typically large number of HLRs to a relatively few number of nodes with the HP HLR. So we've generated quite a bit of experience when it comes to consolidating these confusing legacy networks into these centralized off-switch HLR architecture that we pioneered.

Christine Bentsen: Super, ok let's talk about a specific project. I know you recently did a successful project with VIVO in Brazil?

Alex Petsos: VIVO is an excellent example of where an extremely large number of HLRs spread all over the country, which creates management problems in your having additional numbers of facilities and all that that entails, and you also have service issues. Bob mentioned quality of service as I move around the country. What we were able to do with VIVO is drastically reduce, and I don't want to give away any specific numbers here but we drastically reduced the number of HLRs in VIVO's network, we've been able to reduce the number of data centers that they've had to exist in, so delivering both operational advantages in terms of operations administration and management of those elements, as well as providing these highly reliable fault-tolerant redundant systems that deliver the quality of service that the subscribers expect.

Christine Bentsen: And how large is the VIVO network?

Alex Petsos: Right now I believe VIVO has about thirty million subscribers in their network and, as you know, Brazil is a fairly large country with both heavy metropolitan areas—Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro—and also some very remote areas, so it's important for us to deliver excellent quality of service and reliability across that network wherever the subscribers may be.

Christine Bentsen: Super, super.

Bob Chenal: And back, too, to some of the capability that HP provides that enables this kind of consolidation on the kind of scale that we are talking about. Fault tolerance is an issue, scale is an issue, but a lot of these networks, because they are using different technology they may be using ANSI and GSM—they are going to need a platform that's going to accommodate both those kinds of technology. There is no point, or you wouldn't be able to consolidate down if, in fact, you had to have different boxes, different nodes, etc., for each kind of technology that was employed in the network and you'd also want to have very consistent operations interfaces across all of your nodes so you can see one view of the network and be able to look at the technology, the software stacks that are involved in supporting those different technologies and that's another thing that's made VIVO very successful. They are able to reduce their operations expense, not only from the number of nodes and facilities that they have to maintain but from an operations standpoint, given that the HLR offering that we have allows you to have a single view of the systems that you've deployed from a management perspective, they were able to dramatically reduce the number of operators that they had to manage their network.

Christine Bentsen: So can you talk about any key lessons learned from the VIVO project or any of the other large scale HRLC projects?

Alex Petsos: You know, I think what I would stress there, and this has come across in pretty much all of our engagements, especially with large service providers, is how closely we work up front with the customer, even in the pre-sales phase, right, in terms of understanding exactly, you know, what the topology of their network is, what the load, in other words, the call rates are, the transactions that are being generated by the subscribers, and also and specifically the number of features and what those features are. Typically we go into a large installation like we just talked about where perhaps there's multiple equipment providers and you may have different elements like proprietary features, non-standard proprietary features that one equipment provider would have and we need to understand what those are, map them to standards-based features or do some custom development and, again, all of this starts in the pre-sales phase so that we can work, and I'll stress this probably over the course of this conversation a number of times, we can work closely with the customer as kind of a trusted advisor, as a trusted partner to make sure that as we consolidate HLRs, as we migrate subscribers, which is a very nervous time for a lot of service providers. It's an important activity that requires very detailed methods of procedures so we make sure that it's done right the first time and we've never had to roll back a migration because of our process or execution. Those are the elements that we want to work very closely with with the customer and understand up front.

Bob Chenal: That's a bit challenge. You can have service providers who have a variety of different hand sets and a variety of different feature sets that are offered across their network and after things are migrated on to the new system, the thing that they have to be assured of is that all those features are going to be replicated, you know, and operate as they always did.

And they also are typically in a situation where they want to move and do the migration of the data off of the old HLRs on to the new rapidly but they don't want to do it all at once, so we have worked very closely with the customer to work out all the details of migration and to do it at the pace that the service provider knows is optimal given their customer base and the features in the network and the probably multiple different switch vendors that the system is interfacing with.

Christine Bentsen: So HP's track record of successful projects, I would think, would be very reassuring to service providers when looking at different vendors.

Alex Petsos: As I mentioned, we've never had to roll back because of our procedures, our methods, our execution of a subscriber migration, and I would also stress that given how we came into the business, again going I where there's typically always existing, you know, legacy HLRs and the customer wants to evolve to some newer, better technology, we consider it really intellectual property of our own, these procedures and methods that we use, because typically equipment providers are used to dealing with their own equipment, maybe migrating from an earlier version to the next version of their own...

Christine Bentsen: Sure.

Alex Petsos: ...but rarely with a number of different other equipment providers and that's the environment that we are very comfortable and very experienced in and we can certainly, certainly bring that ease and that peace of mind to our service provider customers as we are working through this process with them.

Christine Bentsen: Great. So in addition to experience and peace of mind and consulting, which are all very important things, what else does HP bring to the table that other vendors might not?

Bob Chenal: I think one of the key advantages that we have with our solution is the level of fault tolerance and the scale that's necessary for consolidation. We have an advantage in that we have platform capability based on the HP NonStop system that is simply unique in the way that it scales. It scales horizontally. It scales out to 4,000 processors and its level of fault tolerance is unmatched in the industry and that's because HP controls all of the software and hardware within the platform. We do it all. It allows our customers to be certain that if they do have a problem, that one company is going to solve that problem. We don't have the issue of well, it's somebody else's database, it's somebody else's middleware, etc. It's completely us.

Christine Bentsen: No finger pointing.

Bob Chenal: No finger pointing, so it's rapid response. And it also means that if a customer says, "You know, we'd like a little innovation here. This would be a nifty feature to do," well, everything that's required to make that happen we are in control of. And that's a huge differentiator for us.

So ultimately, since we control all that technology, we can do the things that are necessary to do the kind of scaling that you need and, you know, the full architecture of the system avoids some of the pitfalls of scaling that, you know, ordinary platforms typically have because you can add, you can continue to add processors typically up to some point and then there's a fall off in the amount of horsepower you get on that addition and that's simply not true on this system. And as you add things, it actually...the mean time between failures on the system actually increases because you've got additional components to failover to, etc. So as it gets bigger, it gets better from a fault tolerance standpoint and, you know, that's the kind of thing that's necessary for these really large installations.

Alex Petsos: I think what I'd add, Bob, to those excellent points are the fact that we do have in countries, in the regions, experts and regional competency centers that can help both deliver, deploy, support and even do additional, additional development around all these solutions as we deploy them so HP really brings the whole picture, from pre-sales consulting, all the way through, delivery and deployment of the solution and follow-on support of the solution. We are a strong player in the telecommunication space and certainly have a lot to bring to a service provider customer.

Bob Chenal: Right, and I think we are generally much more responsive in or ability to provide new features and innovation and that's because, as I said before, we control all the platform technology involved but we are also sort of coming from a different background in that we are an IT company and having software development layered in such a way that we can control the application itself and do things necessary in the application to create those features. That's different than the typical scenario where you...that you might be faced with with a network equipment provider who has HLR function operating very tightly with a switching element, and to get a change, you know, into the HLR typically from a lot of those suppliers, just takes a lot longer because there's more people involved across multiple products to make that same thing happen.

So we sort of consider ourselves the Switzerland, if you will, of subscriber data management in that we are able to operate with all of the legacy switch equipment and the latest switching equipment from all these companies.

Christine Bentsen: Right.

Bob Chenal: And do the emulation of proprietary features if they have them, right? We can do a lot of these things on our own and make new features happen without having...forcing the customer to go to the switch manufacturer and say, "Oh, I need you to do something as well." Right?

Christine Bentsen: Right.

Bob Chenal: So the overall experience for them is, you know, if you come to us, we can develop the feature a lot faster than I think our competitors.

Christine Bentsen: And support it for the customer ongoing.

Bob Chenal: Absolutely.

Christine Bentsen: Where is HP going with subscriber data management?

Alex Petsos: I think one question...we talked about, we talked about consolidation in HLR consolidation. It's clearly true that in 2, 2½ G networks, 3 G networks for that matter, the HLR is the key element, the key repository for subscriber data information, OK? As we move towards next generation networks, IMS networks, some interesting things begin to happen. You have legacy elements like the HLR, you have new elements like the HSS, the Home Subscriber Server which is also a repository for subscriber data, and these elements are going to have to co-exist for a number of years.

HP has a philosophy and is building our roadmaps and our products with a very evolutionary paradigm in mind where these things will co-exist. You can co-locate our HLR, our HSS. They interoperate very closely with each other. They interoperate with other repositories like application servers and what have you that may have other subscriber data. So this is what we also believe is an advantage. Rather than having to come in and completely replace existing elements, if I make a purchase today let's say around an HLR, I don't have to throw it away when I want to get an HSS. That will still be there, we'll still interoperate with, we'll leverage the same platform as the HSS and the HLR, so it's important for us to preserve the customer's investment in this space. Any of our engagements today around new HLR placements, around HLR expansions, we look at the RFPs that are coming out and we stress, even if they don't, the forward-thinking elements here—what the customer's plans are in terms of evolution of their network and we've been spending a lot of time developing our products and our roadmaps with that in mind.

Christine Bentsen: So how do you develop your roadmaps when it's really hard, I would think, especially in telecom, to know exactly where the future is going?

Alex Petsos: I think that's a great question and, Bob, and feel free to jump in here. I'll just mention a lot of that begins with our heavy participation in the main standards bodies that are leading the way in terms of developing what these next generations will look like. We heavily participate on communities. We lead discussions. That's both wireless and with the convergence side there's also the broadband side, you know, to consider as well, as well as working closely with our largest service providers and understanding their views.

Bob Chenal: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all of our customers, when they are making these really very large decisions that involve significant numbers of systems and investment, look at our strategic direction very closely and besides, you know, the pathway from HLR to HSS, there's also this larger issue of the data silos that start to develop in networks wherein you deploy a new application and it has its own data and some of that data is actually related to subscribers, but unfortunately now it's on another system, right? And that linkage, if it gets unsynchronized, starts to be a problem and you can imagine a service provider that really is anxious to deploy, you know, dozens of new applications can end up with a situation where they are getting a lot of data that is unfederated, that is unsynchronized with a lot of data silos that start to exist in the network and they can't have a single view of their customer, right, to understand exactly how many push to talk conference calls, or push to conference calls they've set up lately and maybe they would be interested in a service that helps them there but that data is over on a particular application server that does that and there's no easy way to kind of coordinate and look at that data. That's what we have in mind.

At the core of the network, the operational data is your vital subscriber profile information that we have been maintaining on our HLR and with our HSS which is, you know, we've been working on it for a couple of years and it's been available for a while now. We know all about that. But we also, as an IT company, know a lot about database technology, real-time database technology and how that can be applied to solve this problem of unfederated, unsynchronized data in a network. And it is the key issue that we hear from our customers. This is what keeps them worried at night. How do they synchronize all that and how do they do that and are able to scale the solution that ultimately comes into play, right? If they are successful, they are going to have subscribers using dozens of new applications all the time and every time they do, they are interacting with the network and transferring data back and forth and a lot of times that has to be done, you know, rapidly in real-time. And so the scaling issues are just complicated and compounded by this issue of having a consolidated user data repository. So...

Christine Bentsen: And it's not just, supporting your customers but you are also saying that it's getting to know what your customers are using and understanding what systems they need, what functionality they need.

Bob Chenal: Well that certainly...that's another interesting aspect of this. Once you do have the ability to have a single view of your customer and you have a real-time capability which requires, you know, this, this ability to scale to do that kind of thing, then you can get to the point where your network can be proactive and it can automatically understand your customer's nature and what they need and would want more of.

Alex Petsos: You remember earlier I mentioned that notion of being that trusted advisor, that trusted partner, and that's really what wraps around this. By virtue of having that kind of relationship with the customer, by having the focus that we have on participation and understanding where the standards are going, where the direction is going, and our global footprint in working with service providers and understanding where they are going, bringing that together when working with a specific customer and helping work through this, because they are in many cases looking for guidance, looking for some suggestions, looking for answers, especially, as I also mentioned earlier, how the heck do I get started? We can bring that to our discussions and that's really all part of the value proposition that HP has when working with our customers.

Christine Bentsen: Sure, and that's one of our mantras. It's not just support. It's innovate.

Bob Chenal: Exactly right. And that proactive network, is a kind of innovation that I think a lot of our service providers would really want to provide to end customers. They want to innovate rapidly. That means they want to, you know, develop applications quickly. If they have a consolidated view of their data internally, that just means that application development is significantly eased, right? So you can introduce new applications and you can start to do that...start have the network be proactive and react to needs of customers, and all that...what that means is more revenue and a reduction of turn for their customer base. So I think everybody's eyes are on this issue of getting to a single view of the network so they can do the kind of innovation that they really want to do and, you know, bring a lot more value to their customers and increase customer loyalty.

Christine Bentsen: So HP is spending a lot of resources to do research in this area?

Bob Chenal: Absolutely. It's...I think there's going to be some interesting announcements in the, in the near future that you are going to hear about and it's not just in this area of subscriber data management, HRL and HSS. It's in other areas that involve data mining and I think it's directly applicable to the kind of things that were talked about today.

Christine Bentsen: But no sneak previews?

Bob Chenal: I can't.

Christine Bentsen: Bob and Alex, thanks so much for your time today. You can find out more about this topic and more about OpenCall on the Web site at www.hp.com/go/opencallpodcast. We've posted the success stories we talked about today and a great article called "On The Road To IMS—Consolidate, Converge, Innovate." I hope you will join us next time. Thanks.

Alex Petsos: Thank you.

Bob Chenal: Thank you very much.