Linux Professional Institute Announces Hewlett-Packard Education Services Sponsorship

(Kassel, Germany: September 17, 2004) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the premier Linux certification organization world wide (http://www.lpi.org), together with its affiliate LPI-German, announced that Hewlett-Packard Education Services had become its most recent sponsor. Hewlett-Packard Germany was providing the sponsorship to LPI international to assist with LPI-German marketing and business development activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

¨Hewlett Packard International has been a long time supporter of the Linux Professional Institute and this additional sponsorship from its corporate headquarters in Germany further demonstrates that company´s commitment to the Linux community and to Linux professionalism, ¨ said Evan Leibovitch, President of LPI.

HP Education Services (HPES) Germany has been training IT-Professionals successfully for now over 30 years with an annual volume of over 250.000 satisfied customers. Backed by this experience HPES is also focusing on the development of new premier-level seminars in the evolving technology fields, delivering industry strength content using innovative and effective educational methods. HP Seminars are taught only on HP hardware, with the latest SAN and Networking Technologies readily at hand where the curriculum requires it. Instructors are required to measure up to high standards and are usually long-standing professionals with 10+ years experience in the UNIX/Linux area. For HPES Linux Seminars in preparation for LPI refer to http://www.hp.com/de/hpeducation.

Lorenz Kuhlee, HP Training Program Manager, said upon completion of the sponsorship: ¨HPES recognizes the significant contribution LPI-German has made to the promotion of Linux professionalism within the European continent specifically through the advancement of Linux certification. Since our customers traditionally demand to be educated to a high standard that they can apply and demonstrate in their jobs, backing LPI in the Linux sector is only a natural step for HP Education Services.¨ For further information on the HPES sponsorship of LPI see the HP media release at: http://dev.lpi.org:8080/twiki/pub/Operations/MediaReleases/HP-LPISponsorshipEnglish.pdf

Kuhlee noted that since LPI-German was formally incorporated in February of this year the organization has been very active in the open source community developing contacts with training organizations, book publishers, and governments.

LPI-German President, Reiner Brandt, spoke enthusiastically of the sponsorship and that the timing of the sponsorship was fortunate: ¨LPI-German has been developing a number of initiatives to further capitalize on our role as the fastest growing affiliate within the LPI community. The resources provided by this sponsorship will enable us to move forward much faster with our programs, particularly those aimed at organizations involved in IT training.

LPI´s certification program has delivered over 55,000 certification exams globally since the program´s inception in 2000 and supports an affiliate network on all five continents worldwide including Brazil, Bulgaria, Jamaica, United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, Australia and China, with an additional affiliate now being developed in South Africa.

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