Motorola vice-president (corporate) Srikanth Kannankote (left) with Wipro COO A.L. Rao in Mumbai on Wednesday. (PTI)

Mumbai, Aug. 2: WMNetServ, the joint venture between Wipro and Motorola for outsourced telecom services, plans to invest over $20 million in India over the next three years to develop tools and technology.

WMNetServ, in which Wipro is a major stakeholder, will initially start operations with 50 engineers. It will, however, have an access to the large talent pool of Wipro.

WMNetServ, which will be operational by this month-end, will host a global network operations centre platform that will integrate with Motorola’s existing centres in North America and Europe to provide network monitoring capabilities to customers. The joint venture will be headquartered in Europe and its delivery centres will be based in Gurgaon and Bangalore. They will be led by a Wipro representative and the board will have members from Wipro and Motorola senior management.

The joint venture is aimed at tapping the large scale outsourcing in network and communications space.

Senior officials of the joint venture said they are now working on “five to six prospects”. They, however, did not divulge the identities of these potential clients. WMNetServ plans to focus on both India and China as both these countries are likely to see heightened telecom activity.

WMNetServ is being seen as a strategic move for both companies. Motorola has capabilities in out-tasking, build-operate-transfer and total outsourcing and Wipro’s expertise lies in delivering managed services.

“The combined strength of Wipro and Motorola gives WMNetServ a competitive advantage in managed services. Customers can reap the benefits of two industry leaders delivering managed services that are innovative, high-quality and offer global capabilities in a converging marketplace,” said Srikanth Kannankote, corporate vice-president of Motorola.

Both the companies are optimistic about the recent trend of telecom operators wanting to outsource their network operations to focus on their core competence. According to Mercer Management Consulting, the global managed and advisory services market is expected to almost double during the next four years, reaching $48 billion by 2010. This reflects an industry-wide shift from the traditional use of in-house teams to manage network operations to more flexible, managed service models that allow operators to focus on critical business functions while upgrading to next-generation capabilities.

The joint venture will help provide network maintenance, operation and management services for telecom clients globally.