HP Unveils IMS-Compliant Media Server With Hip New Spin

By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist

Just like its fiercest rival, Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday has jumped into the burgeoning IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) field with the introduction of a new media server, HP OpenCall Media Platform Media Resource Function (MRF), providing a foundation for advanced multimedia and interactive services that span across wireless, landline and broadband networks.

The move comes two weeks after IBM threw its hat into the proverbial IMS ring, introducing its own architecture to help telecommunications service providers to transition from circuit-switched PSTN-based networks to next-generation networks based on the higher scalability of packet-switched technology. Both IBM and HP are relatively late newcomers to the IMS field, which is especially detrimental given that IMS is generally viewed as an overall architecture rather than piecemeal components and many larger service providers have already made initial commitments on deployment.

But HP’s late entry can be easily overcome by partnering with developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) and demonstrating the full capabilities of IMS to the service provider community, according to company officials.

“The feedback we have from equipment providers is they will provide a subset of solutions that the service providers are going to buy. Some of the more unique services are going to come from the ISVs,” said Peter Dragunas, Director of HP’s Network and Service Providers (NSP) business.

As such, HP wants to put a hip, young spin on its IMS offer by partnering with Movial and Ubiquity Software on a new service called Mobile MusicSharing that enables mobile users to join in a conference call, listen to their favorite music and talk about it at the same time … all in a secure session that protects digital copyrights.

Through its consulting practice, HP’s NSP business has built up a portfolio of clients offering operation support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS), although its involvement in VoIP deployments have been more limited compared with the likes of Cisco Systems and Avaya. Its latest media server, which processes voice and video packets through an Intel-based Host Media Processing (HMP) architecture, represents its first foray into IMS.

In its prepared statement, HP said its OpenCall Media Platform, which has already been widely deployed, has now been expanded to incorporate the MRF capability in emerging IMS networks. Current and planned capabilities include audio and voice services (interactive voice response, voicemail, conferencing) as well as a wide range of multimedia, collaborative and interactive services such as video mail, video conferencing, participation TV and music sharing.

HP OpenCall Media Platform MRF is based on its commercial server line of Intel-based microprocessor platforms. The HP OpenCall portfolio includes other key IMS network building blocks.

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.

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