As Red Hat celebrates with its 10,000th certified engineer graduate worldwide, it also enjoys an increased level of interest in Australia.
Red Hat set up Australian training courses four years ago and there are now more than 300 Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCEs), with numbers growing steadily by 50 percent year on year.
Red Hat global learning services manager for the Asia Pacific, Jodie Kane, said that Australia comes just after Germany, India and China in the top 10 countries for RHCE graduates.
“The US leads the way with 3000 graduates, but the number differences between the other countries is minimal,” she said. “This is a pretty impressive indicator of the level of interest in Australia if you think about population differences in those countries.”
Kane said the performance-based exam which graduates must pass for their certification is demanding, with a 60 percent pass rate in Australia.
Kane points to the increased interest in Linux at the enterprise level as a reason for the growing numbers enrolled in Red Hat courses.
“It has only really been in the last year that Australian companies have been embracing Linux operating systems and these companies cannot afford to have their systems go down without qualified people on hand to administer, install and configure their systems,” Kane said.
Red Hat RHCE courses are held in all Australian capital cities except Hobart.