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Wipro's telecom night mares seem to have come to an end registering a growth of 25 percent during the last fiscal from Rs 902 crore to Rs 1129 crore. The major reason for Wipro's revival of fortunes appears to be the improvement in the economic climate that stimulated spending among its clients. Therefore, growth was triggered by the twin factors of acquisition of new customers and increase in customer spends amongst existing customers. It reflects that the investments that Wipro did in building the software business as well as enhancing the service offerings in India, West Asia, and the Asia Pacific has started paying off.

Telecom revenues received a boom, as there were several new wins that primarily started onsite work. Whereas, telecom has primarily been an offshore business. Wipro is actually taking over the full product ownership on an ongoing basis. Its notable telecom clients include Cisco and Nortel.

Recently Wipro signed an agreement with Nokia to set up a competency center. This is a big step for Wipro in the world of mobile handsets as Wipro will provide smart phone development and integration services for handset manufacturers that have the licensed Series 60 Platform.

Vice chairman: Vivek Paul Area of Operations: Telecom software Address: Doddakannelli, Sarjapur Road, Bangalore 560 035 Tel: 080-28440011 Fax: 080- 288440216 Website: www.wipro.com V&D estimates CyberMedia Research Revenues from telecom related work Highlights The equipment makers account for 17 percent of Wipro's total telecom revenues. New products account for close to 30 per cent of the new work from telecom equipment vendors Wipro signed an agreement with Nokia to set up a competency center for the Series 60 Platform A major customer win for Wipro was the Nordic telecom operator, TeliaSonera to integrate the fixed network production business unit for its OSS to the next generation COTS-based OSS systems Wipro got ICRA's highest credit rating of SVG1

During the year, Wipro positioned itself strongly to address the huge Wi-Fi wave that is about the sweep the world by launching the next-generation IEEE 802.11g standard-based intellectual property (IP) solution for wireless connectivity. It also licensed its wireless LAN IPs to STMicroelectronics through Answer Systems, its IP distributor in Europe.

A major customer win for Wirpo was the Nordic telecom operator, TeliaSonera. The deal involves integration of the fixed network production business unit for its operational support system to the next-generation COTS-based OSS systems. Wipro also made a strategic alliance and a reseller agreement with MetaSolv Software to offer communications management solutions for next generation and traditional networks and services. This is significant since, so far the major part of Wipro's telecom software revenues have come from equipment companies like Cisco, Nortel, and Nokia; unlike TCS, Infosys, and Satyam, which have successfully tapped the OSS/BSS market for the telecom operators.

The equipment makers account for as much as 17 percent of Wipro's total revenues. New products account for close to 30 percent of the new work from telecom equipment vendors. Increased spending amongst telecom equipment vendors has seen them scale up their India operations, at the same time resulting in outsourcing a major part of their R&D work to Wipro.

Network integration revenues increased from Rs 247 crore in the previous fiscal to Rs 323 crore registering a 31 percent growth during the fiscal. In the last quarter itself, Wirpo Infotech did well by bagging 20 infrastructure clients and 22 systems integration contracts. It received good orders from Qatar Petroleum, BFKT (Thailand), a large Australian bank, a Saudi-based petroleum company, a customs body in UAE, a technology company in Jordan, and Yum Foods in Australia.

However, in the booming area of call center and BPO integration Wipro Infotech failed to make any major dent and was way behind even smaller companies like Network Solution and 3D Networks, apart from the major competitor Datacraft. Wipro became the first entity to get the credit rating agency ICRA's highest category SVG1 rating for stakeholders' value creation and governance practices. This is a significant achievement in the wake of corporate scandals that rocked the Western world in recent times.