OREANDA-NEWS. April 18, 2014. Alfa-Bank and IBM (NYSE: IBM) signed a three-year contract under which Alfa-Bank and the Alfa Banking Group banks in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine can use IBM software based on International Software Licensing Agreement.

The Agreement makes it possible to match the expenses for software licensing with the bank’s project portfolio dynamics.

The Agreement covers such areas as collaboration systems, monitoring of applications, electronic archive maintenance and ESB.

"The unique character of this Agreement lies in the possibility to flexibly meet needs for software and increase its utilization through a number of the mechanisms first-ever used in Russia and the CIS. These mechanisms, inter alia, include customer privilege to modify independently the software specified in the Agreement and change the number of the used by the bank licenses for a specific software depending on customer business requirements", — said Tatiana Sorokina, IBM Eastern Europe/Asia Software Sales Director.

The Agreement also provides for special price terms to purchase the IBM software not specified in the Agreement, but used in the bank’s current architecture, and any other components required to implement a variety of business initiatives.

The participation of IBM Global Financing in the said project allows setting up within the Agreement of the schedule of payments in line with the bank’s budget policy, thus making it possible to distribute equally the costs of purchasing IBM software regardless of the dynamics of its on-peak load.

"The important thing for us was to provide for such cooperation criteria that would meet mid-term IT requirements not only for Alfa-Bank Russia, but for the Alfa Banking Group banks as well. In doing so, we strived to develop most viable and flexible models of implementation of these criteria able to recognize and support the dynamics of IT development for all the Alfa Banking Group banks. We believe that this Agreement is a very adequate mechanism to implement these objectives", said Martin Piletsky, Head of Information Technologies at Alfa-Bank.

The Agreement was signed in December 2013 directly between IBM World Trade Corporation and Alfa-Bank, allowing the Bank to purchase software licenses both directly from IBM and through its authorized business partners.