Under this agreement, LCC Infotech has become Novell Education Academic Partner, and will be providing the CNE and CNA courses through its 640-odd centres in Calcutta, Delhi, Coimbatore, Chennai and Hyderabad. In addition, LCC is planning to launch a full-time course in e-commerce by January 2000.

According to Lakhotia, the two courses have been integrated into LCC's two-year Quality Qualified Software Professional and Total Information Systems Management 2000 courses. However, Lakhotia refused to comment on the course fees which will be decided at a meeting slated for November 26.According to Pradhan, the CNE course will cost around Rs 25,000 while CNA's four to five modules willcost between Rs 4,000 and Rs 6,000.

The CNE course is aimed at integrating diverse network lines, changing local area networks into intranet and integrating a Novell Directory Services implementation. On the other hand, the CNA course imparts training to step up user workstation, manage users and resources in a network environment and execute network applications.

In 1998-99, LCC's turnover was Rs 64 crore. The company posted a profit of Rs 5.56 crore in the second quarter ended September 30, 1999.

Onward Novell Software (I) Ltd, a joint venture between the US's Novell Inc and Onward Network Technologies Ltd, is planning to launch new products by the end of December 1999 which will have web-application tools. Pradhan noted: "/``By December-end new products will be launched which will have all web application tools.''