Novell Inc has signed an agreement with ALSI making Kazakhstan’s largest assembly company the first Novell Authorized Business Partner in the Republic. Under the agreement, ALSI undertakes to purchase several hundred thousand US dollars’ worth of Novell’s products in 1996, mostly network operating systems. ALSI has several CNEs – Certified Novell Engineers – among its staff and it has probably sold more Novell licenses than any other Kazakhstani computer company. ALSI president Isakhan Alimzhanov says that acquiring Novell Authorized Business Partner status is in line with ALSI’s strategic goal to be able to sell a sufficiently wide spectrum of products, both software and hardware, to satisfy the maximum number of different types of customer. (ALSI is also the only Kazakhstani distributor of Microsoft Corp products). Konstantine Chikin, channel sales manager of Novell’s former Soviet Union Representative Office says that soon another big Kazakhstani computer company, Glotur, will be awarded the same status. Chikin says that in the near future, Novell plans to open in the Almaty Training Center and probably a number of Novell resellers will get various types of authorization.
