Wipro signs strategic pact with SmartTrust

Wipro Technologies has won a three-year multi-million dollar deal from a Swedish firm, Smart Trust, to build "mobile device management solutions".

Smart Trust expects to take products based on Wipro's work to the "global market" in a year's time, Paul Cuss, chief executive officer of the firm told reporters here on Wednesday.

SmartTrust sells its solution, called "SmartManage" to a 100 operators worldwide including those in India, which contributes to between 8 per cent and 10 per cent of its business, Cuss said.

Smart Manage helps configure a mobile phone to handle "data services" applications like video streaming from any given operator, Cuss said.

Stockholm, Sweden-based SmartTrust, started out as a small venture a decade ago with initial investments from a well-known telecom firm in Sweden. In 2000 and 2001, Sonera, a Finnish telecom firm "built it up" and in 2002, a consortium of equity venture funds acquired controlling interest in Smart Trust.

The funds, including the Carlyle Group, General Electric and Eqvitec, a Finnish technology investor, are "driving the firm to grow globally", he said. SmartTrust has about 250 staff worldwide including some 57 involved in research and development in Stockholm.

Wipro started work for SmartTrust by sending a small core team to be trained in Sweden. By the end of this year, some 30 staff of Wipro will work full time on SmartTrust projects.

SmartManage and other technologies that configure mobile handsets with software transmitted "over the air" were a big growth segment in mobile telephony market, Cuss said.

"Our own business comes from Asia (25 per cent excluding Japan), Europe, West Asia and Africa (50 per cent) and the Americas (25 per cent). It is growing at 20 per cent."

The work that Wipro will do is not "outsourcing for cutting costs, but involves accelerated development of these technologies into products for markets worldwide," he said.