Wipro and Alinean Partner to Improve Business Value Sales Effectiveness for IT Vendors

Unique Combination of Competitive TCO Research Expertise and
Business Value Sales Tools Empowers IT Product Vendors to Quantify Competitive Advantage to Prospects

Boston MA and Orlando FL, December 5, 2007: Wipro’s Global Product Strategy and Architecture (PSA) Practice, the research, business value and market strategy consultancy group within Wipro Technologies (NYSE:WIT), and Alinean, the leading expert on IT Business Value Selling solutions, have announced a 360 degree strategic alliance to develop competitive Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-based business value selling solutions for IT vendors and solution providers.

The combination of Wipro’s TCO Research and Alinean’s sales tools will enable product vendors to obtain comprehensive third-party validated customized TCO justifications – allowing their customers, prospects, partners, and sales and consulting professionals to easily quantify the TCO advantage of the IT vendors’ products.

The Wipro-Alinean TCO solution will consist of Alinean on-demand TCO calculators available via vendor websites and to partner/sales professionals, populated with data and metrics collected via Wipro’s research. TCO calculators will be accompanied by Wipro-developed research and methodology white papers, case studies and educational programs to help prospects understand the unbiased research and attention to detail that constitutes the metrics, tools and results. This combined offering of Wipro’s research expertise and Alinean’s sales tools is unrivaled.

“Since the bursting of the technology bubble in 2001, IT purchase decisions have fundamentally changed, with more executive due diligence and greater financial scrutiny than ever before,” said Bill Kirwin, ex-Gartner research VP, TCO expert and Alinean advisory board member. “Competitive and validated TCO comparisons are a fundamental core competency that IT sellers need to have in order to be invited to the party, and close the deal.”

Several customers have already capitalized on the Wipro-Alinean partnership. The Mobile Communications Business recently leveraged Wipro’s research and Alinean comparison tools highlighting the TCO advantages of Windows Mobile over competitors, such as RIM. The research can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/business/strategy/tco.mspx. Other business units leveraging the Wipro-Alinean TCO solutions include Windows Vista Mobility and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.

"In order to communicate the substantial TCO advantages of Windows Mobile, we worked with Wipro to perform research and case studies to validate and quantify the cost savings and advantages of Windows Mobile over competitive solutions, and empowered customers, partners and sales professionals worldwide to quantify their unique cost savings opportunities via Alinean's easy–to-use on-demand TCO software," said Steve Hegenderfer, Solution Delivery Group Manager, Microsoft Corp. "With this third-party validated TCO sales solution, we can clearly demonstrate our competitive advantage, and extend Windows Mobile adoption."

The benefits of using the Wipro-Alinean TCO-based business value selling tools include:

          •  Empowering IT vendors to quantify competitive TCO advantage
          •  Increasing qualified leads by connecting with economic buyers and strategic decision makers
          •  Reducing sales cycles by creating the business case to purchase, and most importantly
          •  Moving decisions from tactical purchase price to longer term strategic value proposition.

“We are extremely pleased to offer our customers Wipro’s leading research, case studies, white papers and educational services in competitive TCO,” said Tom Pisello, ex-Managing VP of Gartner and CEO and founder of Alinean. “These services will help IT vendors overcome customer skepticism with third-party validated competitive TCO research - vital in making a credible business case.”

“In the last several years, Wipro’s PSA Practice has performed over 45 ROI/TCO business cases across the globe in countries and regions such as the US, EU, India, China, and Japan,” said Theo Forbath, Chief Strategist & Practice Leader of Wipro’s Global Product Strategy & Architecture (PSA) Practice. “We can now leverage Wipro’s leadership in product engineering and integrate the results of our research into the Alinean sales tools, providing our customers fast and accessible research results that can be used to guide product marketing plans and to better inform customer purchasing decisions”.

Wipro’s TCO competitive research combines survey-based case studies of actual customer installations and lab-based comparisons to ensure that findings are factual and extensible to other customer use case scenarios. As the original developers of Gartner’s TCO methodology and solutions, Alinean on-demand TCO comparison tools are based on 20 years of TCO model and software development experience, and are fully customizable for specific IT vendor solutions and specific customer metrics and use cases. Customized IT vendor TCO solutions are available now, starting at $40,000.

About Wipro Product Strategy and Architecture Practice

Wipro’s Product Strategy and Architecture Practice has more than fourteen years of experience in researching, analyzing, and documenting the business value of technology solutions. Wipro’s PSA Practice assists technology vendors, service providers and enterprises in developing innovative and effective product and IT strategies that enable them to expand their market opportunities extend their competitive advantage and optimize their business operations. Wipro’s PSA Practice works with many of the leading and emerging IT vendors around the world in developing successful product architectures and market strategies. A key reason that the PSA Practice has sustained over 60% year to year growth is that it offers clients unique insights from Wipro’s Telecommunications and Product Engineering (TPE) Business, the world’s largest professional services R&D and engineering organization, coupled with seasoned PSA consultants and technical architects who have practical hands-on experience that informs their business analysis work. More information on Wipro PSA can be found at: http://www.wipro.com/pes/services/psa/about_psa.htm

Forward-looking and cautionary statements
Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects and our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions are forward looking statements, which involve a number of risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding our ability to integrate and manage acquired IT professionals, our ability to integrate acquired assets in a cost effective and timely manner, fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, , liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Wipro has made strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Wipro may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward looking statements, including statements contained in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. Wipro does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company. For further information, please visit our websites at www.wipro.com, www.wiprocorporate.com and www.wipro.co.in.

About Alinean

Alinean develops software and solutions to streamline the B2B selling process with business value selling solutions – using ROI/TCO and business case analysis to prove and improve the value of solutions to prospects and customers. The company’s founding team pioneered the concept of interactive ROI and TCO software in 1994, developing award-winning solutions for leading B2B vendors and consultants. Its research methodologies and software tools are used by analyst firms and consultancies such as IDC and B2B leaders such as Oracle, HP, Dell, SAP, Microsoft, Symantec and IBM, and have helped justify billions of dollars in IT spending and derived value. For more information, visit www.alinean.com or call 407.382.0005.
 

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