What were the significant orders completed or bagged during the fiscal 2006-07?
Wipro got many big deals both from telecom services providers and equipment vendors in the areas of telecom BPO and projects that require capabilities across IT, networks and operations. Some examples of key wins were inventory consolidation and data migration for a US-based Telco, FMC consulting for a leading telco in UK, and CRM implementation for a service provider based in the Middle East.  In equipment manufacturer business we had good growth in tier-1 accounts and had added a good number of tier-2 and tier-3 accounts. During the year, we won comprehensive networking projects from prestigious clients like the Bharti Group. 

How do you view the domestic market for your business growth in the telecom domain?

Suryanarayana Valluri

vice president, TSP Group

The Indian market has shown good promise as it reaches global proportions. It's a leading edge market and Indian telecom projects are among the best in the world. This wasn't the case two to three years ago. That's why the Indian market is key to our telecom business. There is good traction in system integration projects.  

Why has Wipro realigned its telecom business vertical? 
Wipro believes that the telecom industry is moving towards a collaborative core (partnerships) and to win in such a competitive environment, it is mandatory to change our strategic outlook. We have realigned ourselves to focus more on these aspects. We have consolidated our dominance in the telecom equipment business, and grown in mobile and consumer business which is a significant differentiator. We have been able to combine all round growth in TSP, leverage IT, BPO and network competence, and incubated telecom professional services. 

What were the new challenges, and how are you geared to overcome it?|
Firstly, on the equipment vendor side we are observing a trend of consolidation with lot of mergers and acquisitions taking place. The second challenge is to reach the telecom service providers who are diverse in their offerings as well as geographically distributed. To further penetrate geographically, Wipro is leveraging its strength of Wipro Infotech's presence in the Apac region and Wipro Technologies' impact in the North American and European markets.

The third challenge is related to manpower strength where staff retention is a key focus. Wipro is heavily investing in four competency groups which focus on OSS/BSS, service delivery platform, network testing, and network solutions.

Is there any significant trends in the OSS/BSS space? 
We know that there are three simultaneous factors driving service providers today, getting the cost down by automated business processes through integrated operational support systems, being able to offer integrated service bundles by transforming multiple stove-pipe process and systems stack into a common, multi service delivery capability and at the same time improving customer experience and driving new revenues from new innovative and software content.  

This has led service provider's interest in outsourcing basically on core side for areas like network management and operations. Investing in true service management solutions will be the key. Impact of consolidation will lead to reduction in number of suppliers and, thus, partnerships between ISVs and SIs will remain an important strategy for all players.