TREND SETTER
WIPRO
and more complex. A lot of partners have the ability and we appreciate that but we have a lot of partners who like to understand more and like to have pre-sales support to take the solutions to the customers. So, we’ve an extensive partner reach, second we are not over distributed. That is very critical that all the partners should understand. They are not additional partners who can go and fight for commercial with us. Third is the entire portfolio we have i.e. client systems, data centre systems and Infrastructure software, which can enable the entire IT system of an organization along with our pre-sales support.” The company does not allow any kind of issues to creep between them as the company works around the policy that is conducive to the partners. Secondly the company has an extensible reach to develop the partner base and address their needs on more proactive basis. Thirdly Wipro is India’s third largest services company, which has presence all across the country. So the advantage of the partners is that they can take Wipro services and deliver to the customers or ask Wipro to deliver services. Precisely, this clarity of practice in engaging partners has created stickiness of Wipro among the partners, which has helped them to have more than 2,000 partners across the country. There was a feeling that Wipro is more active in the large organization space than the SMEs but Ashok refutes it says, “We take pride in the fact that a lot of large enterprises depend on Wipro to deliver their entire IT Services and product solutions. The reason is very simple that we can offer end-to-end solutions and end-to-end IT enablement for the enterprise that’s why the enterprises come to us. And that’s why we think that we can take on small and medium enterprises that can also depend on Wipro to deliver those kinds of product and solutions.” Today, the company has a reach right from North-East to Gujarat from the Jammu & Kashmir to Kerala in terms of its own resources, channel partners and its service network. An organization which has similar type of spread will depend on organizations like Wipro to take care of their equipments across the country. So, the company believes in something that they call as the lifecycle IT services and that is where the large organization need those kinds of solutions and they depend on Wipro. It is not that the SMEs do not have such kinds of needs. They do definitely have those kinds of needs and as they mature they can realise that the organizations like Wipro can do better for them in terms of enabling their IT solutions and IT services. At a very high level we are addressesing very large customers. We have verticals and vertical
FINAL QUESTION
ASHOK TRIPATHY GENERAL MANAGER & HEAD S&T IAS HEAD WIPRO INFOTECH
CAN PRODUCT CONTRIBUTION BE AT PAR WITH SERVICES?
I don’t think that in near future, we expect the services growth to slow down and the products’ growth will overtake the services. Secondly more-and-more organizations want to make use of the products by integrating services around it. Look at what is happening globally with Dell and HP. Dell has got into services by acquiring Perot Systems. HP, a product centric organization, has got into services by acquiring EDS. So no gain saying that the product will ever over take the services.
sales structures including telecom, govt. and defence. We have verticalization of solutions not addressing them. Wipro is a very large company. This Systems & Technology division is one of its many arms it has. So naturally whenever there is any talk on this division, its contribution is always referred. But Ashok maintains, “I think each and every business - whether it is in Wipro or any other - is measured by its goals, not in term of what is the currently percentage of contribution to the entire organization. While I am not able to divulge the numbers, I want to say that our revenue percentage of entire India business is very significant. We have been receiving many accolades for our works for last few years within the organization.” It is a fact that while talking about Wipro only the image of services comes to mind not the product but it is a fact that before Wipro became a large Global brand for services, its journey started from IT Products business. Ashok maintains, “It is a fact
that we are known as a large services company and we take a lot of pride of this but our diversification into IT was through creations of products especially in the servers and storage area during 1980s. And that has been a root of IT for Wipro and we can’t forget that roots. It just so happens that there is a global IT services boom and the IT services have superseded the products business in terms of revenues and profitability in the country.”
Finally… With the growth of smart phones and tablets in the enterprises space, can Wipro foray into the smart phone or tablet space? Perhaps not, as Ashok believes that the era of PC is not over yet. Besides, Wipro is working and addressing the enterprises mobility with various unique solutions, which gets connected with the back-end data centres on the fly. He believes that it is not about accessing the web only rather delivering applications to the service organization.
50 SME CHANNELS AUGUST 2011
Trend Setter_Ashok Tripathy of Wipro.indd 50
8/23/2011 7:46:45 PM