Windows of Opportunity

In another milestone to its five-year partnership with Microsoft, Wipro
pushed the 'special relationship' further on the occasion of Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer's visit to the Wipro headquarters in Bangalore. In the past five
years, Wipro has rapidly expanded its Microsoft-related business and Premji and
Ballmer, expectedly, had much to talk about the growing momentum a legendary
partnership would be seeing in the days ahead.

The optimism was not misplaced. Wipro currently has more than 5,000 employees
focused on delivering Microsoft technology solutions to customers. Wipro
recently aligned some key internal business units to provide a broader range and
suite of Microsoft related consulting services to enterprise customers that
include platform strategy consulting, product engineering services, application
integration and management, IT infrastructure and BPO services, across key
verticals that include retail, manufacturing, energy & utilities, healthcare
and financial services.

With the outsourcing boom set to further roil the services scenario, Wipro
has successfully established separate practices to support .NET and
infrastructure-related business opportunities in well-anticipated response to
its lengthening customer list. In fact, US companies are sourcing
industry/domain-specific applications more than ever before, according to a
recent Wipro Technologies survey.

“Wipro offers deep industry expertise and a rich portfolio of solutions building on the Microsoft platform to help customers reduce costs and grow their toplines. We expect our partnership to scale up hugely” -Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

The survey, involving data collected from over 80 senior management
executives, claims that more than 40% of the respondents are actively sourcing
industry-specific domain solutions like CRM, business intelligence, ERP, among
others, while another 42% are researching and piloting the same with active
interest. Wipro feels this is a clear indication that global organizations are
actively outsourcing industry-centric business applications that can sustain
innovation and competitive advantage.

Wipro has worked with the entire gamut of Microsoft applications to bring up
its solutions around them. These include BizTalk Server 2004 to gather customer
data from in-store systems, ASP.NET applications and Microsoft SQL Server 2000
to predict wait times, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to present
the information in real time, and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server
2003 to alert store managers if wait times exceed a preset limit. METRO Group, a
key Wipro customer, expects that shorter queues will increase customer loyalty,
and anticipates adding more functions to the core Store Manager Workbench
architecture designed for it by Wipro.

Besides Workbench, Wipro's intense engagement with Microsoft solutions
includes BPM, help desk management, retail point of sale, RFID, zero touch
deployment and hospital information systems. These have, sans doubt, impressed
Redmond which is only too happy to see the partnership widen. As Ballmer noted,
"Wipro offers deep industry expertise and a rich portfolio of solutions
building on the Microsoft platform to help customers reduce costs and grow their
toplines. We expect our partnership to scale up hugely."

With CXO-led strategic initiatives gaining momentum, global sourcing is
becoming vital for organizations across the world since it enhances value
creation and increases competitiveness. Wipro's Microsoft partnership will be
a vital component of the maturing outsourcing services smorgasbord. Meanwhile,
the special relationship will continue to be special.

Ravi Menon in Bangalore