Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced at Mobile World Congress that it has been selected by AT&T to provide its service provider customers with cloud-based data management services.

HPE's subscriber data management, called HPE I-HSS, allows providers to manage subscriber and device data to simplify network properties and reduce data duplication and inconsistencies. This will enable providers to create new personalized services and more targeted offerings.

AT&T is in the process of transitioning to cloud-based virtual functions on the AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC), and it’s using software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) to accomplish this.

HPE’s I-HSS is one of the components helping AT&T reach its goal of virtualizing its network functions and moving them to AIC. I-HSS serves as home location register (HLR), home subscriber services (HSS) and authentication, and authorization and access (AAA) for databases.

AT&T has more than 80 OpenStack zones in its AIC. AIC zones are physical locations around the world where the company runs its virtual network functions (VNFs).

In April, AT&T announced plans to have 105 AIC zones installed by the end of 2016 but fell short of its goal. However, AT&T did meet its goal of virtualizing 30 percent of its network by the end of 2016, reaching 34 percent, and plans to have 55 percent virtualized by year-end.