The Forum in Astana was held featuring the biggest players of the IT market of Kazakhstan.
On the 24th of September in Astana took place an annual partner meeting of the MERLION Kazakhstan Forum`2013. Let us recall, that the first meeting under the auspices of the Forum was held in July 2012, which brought together more than 100 partners of MERLION from the whole republic.
This year for convenience of the Kazakh partners, the Forum took place in two cities – in Astana and in Almaty. The MERLION Kazakhstan Forum`2013 program was very intensive and eventful: summary of the first two years of the work of MERLION in the market of Kazakhstan, perspective estimation of different segments of the IT market, business development plans in this region for the next years.
The MERLION Kazakhstan Forum`2013 in Astana brought together around 80 participants – the biggest players of the IT market in Kazakhstan. The Conference was held under the support of global IT manufacturers: Canon, Intel, I.R.U, QNAP, Tripp Lite, ZyXEL. Three companies – ZyXEL, QNAP and I.R.U – have presented their products, solutions and newest elaborations on a specially created demonstration booth.
The meeting has opened Victoria Tarantina, the Business Development Director in the countries of Central Asia and South Caucasus of MERLION. Victoria gave details about the partner distribution policy in Kazakhstan, highlighted all aspects of the advanced support from the partners, i.e.: financial, engineering and technical, marketing, logistic services. The speech from Victoria included information on the product portfolio of the company: more than 100 distributed MERLION brands in this region; among the last key contracts – with Acer, Canon, IBM (within the strategic partnership with the DNA company), Lenovo and exclusive distribution of Pantum in Kazakhstan. Victoria has reminded the partners about the individual conditions of MERLION, when working with large tenders, about new financial opportunities of joint participation in project delivery, about the possibilities of logistics and the services on the whole territory of Kazakhstan.
“We have announced about our strategic objective on the conference last year – to become the number 1 IT distributor in Kazakhstan and in the whole region of Central Asia and South Caucasus to 2015, – says Victoria Tarantina. – According to the results of the second year of presence in this market, I can say that we are moving to the announced objective with confidence. Even today we are the largest company not only due to our storage capacity, but also because of the number of partners (we are working with almost more than 500 companies), and volume of the product portfolio (more than 8000 items). We are also in the lead in terms of sales growth of products from such brands as Intel, Seagate, WD. And in the name of MERLION I would like to thank our current partners in Kazakhstan for the cooperation, and to welcome potential partners!”
Since the framework of the MERLION Kazakhstan Forum’2013 supposes a number of business presentations, the manufacturers of IT products, consumer electronics and enterprise equipment have presented to the audience their products, new items and partner programs.
Rysbek Chingiz, the Project Manager ZyXEL, represented the ZyXEL company. After briefly telling about the company, he has described in details the whole spectrum of ZyXEL network solutions: multi-service campus networks for enterprises, education institutions, financial organizations, government institutions; networks for HoReCa; products from the X8004 line, in order to increase the performance of the employees and to optimize the business processes. In the final part of his speech, Chingiz has described all advantages and opportunities of the ZyXEL partner authorization program.
Nasibulin Aidarbek, QNAP Product Manager for Central Asia and South Caucasus, told the audience about the solutions on data storage and video monitoring in QNAP. Aidarbek presented to the audience powerful and at the same time easy to manage network storage systems for residential use; four-disk office servers; data storage systems as an available corporate storage; solutions for backup and implementation of virtualization. A particular and rather large part of the presentation from Aidarbek was dedicated to IP video monitoring for remote house and apartment monitoring. The whole QNAP production has a 3 year warranty and therefore Aidarbek presented a slide with current authorized service centers on the territory of Kazakhstan.
The speech of Talgat Zhanabergenov, the Canon Marketing Expert, was dedicated to Canon business solutions, i.e. office printing equipment. After determining the key problems, connected with the organization of document flow in business, Talgat has told about such solutions as: remote monitoring of the vehicle park, reduction of useless paper consumption, printing monitoring and cost control – for the optimization of the company’s expenses; safe document storage and safe scanning and sending of important documents – for the protection of confidential information.
The report session continued Sergei Suvorov, the I.R.U Project Head. He has highlighted all equipment advantages of this brand with more than 10 years history, mentioned the received awards from such corporations as Intel and Microsoft. He also gave analytical data on the Russian market of PCs in the desktop and laptop computer segments. He has paid special attention to the review of I.R.U. projects: traditional PCs, computers for gamers, workstations, monoblock computers, servers and also mobile devices (nettops, laptops, ultrabooks, tablet PCs). In conclusion, he has announced the new products, which are only being prepared to entry the market.
Alexander Homenko, the expert on Intel corporate technologies has made a report on the topic: “Newest in the Intel processor line in 2013”.
The official part of the event was terminated by the speech of Alexei Volkov, the Tripp Lite System Integrator Manager. He told about the products of this American company with more than 90 years of history. Thus, the solution range of the manufacturer includes: uninterrupted power supply for a reliable power protection; power distribution boxes, cabinets, supports and cooling systems for the equipment; KVM switches, console servers and software for supply control; cables and commutation devices for the connection of equipment. “Tripp Lite offers more than 1000 options for the objective optimization from the customers”, – mentioned Alexei in conclusion.
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Apart from the official part of the event, MERLION Kazakhstan Forum’2013 also includes socializing. A joyful atmosphere of the event was assured by contests and competitions, and a lottery from the Zyxel company, the winner of which received a prize from the vendor: the Internet centre “Keenetic Giga”. The evening ended with a gala dinner and a concert of a popular cover band
