Linux Polska offers certifications to IT professionals interested in open-source technology. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization had to pivot to a virtual classroom model.

Case study: “Linux Polska takes its classes to Skytap on IBM Cloud“

Part of Linux Polska’s business centers on providing IT training courses — both authorized and proprietary — delivered by an experienced team of certified trainers. Linux Polska’s training portfolio contains a wide range of technology and topics, such as Red Hat, EnterpriseDB, Postgres, DevOps, CI/CD, containerization, IT automation and more.

Teaching this type of material requires more than tables, chairs and a whiteboard — IT classrooms must also feature an isolated computer network made up of the trainer’s server and a set of individual participant computers. The trainer must be able to access students’ computers to monitor their progress and help them with problems in real time. Further, the classroom network must be secure, powerful and easy to set up anywhere.

Those requirements remained steady and predictable until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.

“The Skytap service turned out to be a perfect solution for us, as it made it possible to install virtual training rooms and make them available to our students for training,” said Piotr Trando, Training Director, Linux Polska.

The Skytap on IBM Cloud® service supports traditional Linux® applications, allowing users to integrate their solutions with cloud-native services without rewriting or refactoring. For Linux Polska, it represented the easiest and most cost-effective way to create, maintain and use a virtual training environment.

“We believe that, regardless of what happens with the pandemic, our new formula of remote training carried out in the IBM Cloud will remain a constant (and, most likely, dominant) way of delivering our training in the coming years,” said Trando.

Read the case study to learn more.