TID is responsible for the development of Telecom platforms. The HP OpenCall product range is comprised of three components, listed below, addressing the implementation of Intelligent Networking ( Telecom Networks based upon the SS7 common channel signalling protocol to allow service provision on the telephone network).

This platform allows the development, provisioning and deployment of services in the telephone network such as credit-card billing, call forwarding, 0800 numbers and single number services. Such services place large demands on computer systems to serve a large customer base with guaranteed availability and response times.

This platform is capable of executing operator provided services under real-time conditions. Use of an in-memory database (typically of several hundred megabytes of RAM) holding all service subscriber information is necessary to provide the low response times necessary for service provision in a telecom environment.

The platform is built upon the HP Opencall SS7 product enhanced with high availability features so that the SEP operates as a duplex pair ready to failover in case of one systems' failure, or maintenance.

This platform is used to load/enable services on the SEP and provision the SEPs in-memory database.

This platform provides a developers environment for rapid development of real-time services specified in SDL.

Today these components are developed on the HP-UX (HP's Unix) operating system. As Windows NT matures it is desirable to investigate how it can provide a possible future path for such technically demanding components.

The most critical components being the SEP and SS7 components with real-time and high availability constraints. Thus the criteria which make NT of interest are: Scalability, Guaranteed response time, Kernel Threads / Scheduling Policies, Application distribution, High availability / clustering

Porting of existing components also requires driver development and prting issues knowledge.

Michael Bright
Technical Leader in Intelligent Systems Program, R&D
Telecom Infrastructure Division,
Hewlett-Packard France
Michael_Bright@hp.com
Address: 5, ave Raymond Chanas, Eybens, 38053 Grenoble Cedex 9, FRANCE
Tel:[+33] 04 76 14 58 23 FAX 04 76 14 14 88