LPI's Big Exam Lab Delivers More Than 320 Exams in South Africa

The Linux Professional Institute ( LPI ), the premier Linux certification organization, worldwide ( http://www.lpi.org ), announced today that it will be holding it's largest exam lab, in Johannesburg, South Africa, on February 25, 2005.

With exam registrations already exceeding 320, the all day event will offer four writing sessions over the course of the day to handle an unprecedented large number of candidates. A 2003 exam lab in Hong Kong tested approximately 250 candidates.

"We are proud to say that our numbers are climbing, at a time when other, vendor-specific, certification exam numbers seem to be dropping." said Evan Leibovitch, President of LPI. "This is an indication that there is increasing recognition of the value of the community-driven, vendor-independent and vendor-neutral, certification process offered to Linux professionals through LPI."

Organized and hosted by AfriBiz -- a Pretoria-based training facility that provides Linux training at all levels -- this large exam lab is one of a series of regular quarterly labs, which they run with the help of The Shuttleworth Foundation ( TSF ) - LPI's affiliate in South Africa.

"Other training companies in the Linux space have joined us in this effort. SmartSource Corporate Training have provided the venue, and Obsidian Systems, although they are a predominantly Red Hat house, have registered their entire technical team for LPI certification testing, as well as many of their students.", said Alan McKinnon, Head Trainer at AfriBiz. "Only in Linux/Open Source Software is this even remotely possible. I have been working for over 20 years in various technical fields and have never seen anything like this happen before."

More information about AfriBiz or the Exam Lab is available at http://www.afribiz.co.za/lpiframe.html. Information about The Linux Professional Institute ( LPI ) is available at http://www.lpi.org.