Wipro says its second-quarter profit edged up one percent at a time of challenges in the global economy. The company’s profit for the quarter ending Sept. 30 was $265 million as defined under international accounting standards.

In addition, revenues were $1.85 billion, an 18 percent increase when compared to the same time period last year, according to The Associated Press.

“Macroeconomic sentiments continue to remain uncertain. We have seen growth momentum build up in our IT Business with healthy volume growth,” Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro said in a company statement. “Our focused investment strategy will get the business to a higher growth trajectory."

"We are continuing to see incremental progress in our client mining strategy with five customers contributing more than $100 million of revenues and our top customer hitting a revenue run rate upwards of $200 million,” noted Suresh Senapaty, the company’s executive director and chief financial officer. “We had an impact on operating margins in the quarter due to salary increases."

And T K Kurien, CEO of the IT business, described the quarter as “strong,” with revenues coming in “ahead of the upper end of the guided range.”

“We continue to build differentiation and business value through our focus on key themes - Variabilization, Consumerization, Performance Analytics and Innovation in a world of constraints," Kurien said.

In the company’s outlook for the quarter ending on Dec. 31, 2011, revenues from the IT services unit will be in the “range of $1,500 million to $1,530 million.”

The IT services unit had 131,730 employees as of Sept. 30, an increase of 5,240 employees in the quarter. The company also gained 44 new customers during the quarter.

In other recent news, State Street Corporation has signed a multi-year agreement with Wipro to “provide application maintenance and support services. Wipro will deploy pioneering 'lean' methodologies delivered through its award winning CIGMA platform for this IT transformation engagement.” In another agreement, a European communications services provider will use Wipro to provide technical support for the provider's customers in the United Kingdom.

In other recent company news, TechZone360 reported that Wipro Technologies was named a “Leader” among Oracle services providers by Forrester Research.