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Case Studies
Linux Polska
IT training goes virtual
Linux Polska takes its classes to Skytap on IBM Cloud
Linux Polska is a Polish IT company founded in 2009. Its mission is to support clients in overcoming technological barriers and transforming IT.
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.
Extensive offerings
Linux Polska offers more than 500 IT certifications
24x7 Availability
Students have 24x7 access to labs and other classroom materials
Those requirements remained steady and predictable until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. In the blink of an eye, tables, chairs and whiteboards were off-limits. Trando explains: “The pandemic caused a significant collapse of the training market in our country. Customers who were unsure about the future of their businesses put in fewer orders for training services. On top of this were the concerns about maintaining a sanitary environment during the pandemic.”
To continue providing training services to IT professionals, Trando and his team would need to pivot to virtual classrooms. Some things would remain the same, but there would be new requirements, too, because students would be logging in from their own computers, in their own homes. Trando needed a solution that could meet all of his needs at a cost that wouldn’t cause financial distress for Linux Polska or its customers.
Trando immediately began looking for a platform that would support a shift away from in-person training into a virtual, cloud-based training model. “At this stage, we crossed paths with IBM Polska, which presented us with a very innovative service implemented in its cloud, called Skytap, which met most of our expectations from the very beginning,” says Trando.
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.
The solution automates the process of installing and reinstalling training rooms, and it gives students access to powerful virtual machines in the cloud through a web browser. The nested virtualization function gives trainers access to their students’ computers in real time, helping ensure that Linux Polska’s classes continue to be just as effective as they were before the pandemic. Furthermore, with the Skytap on IBM Cloud service, costs are relatively low during training sessions, and they are kept to a minimum between training sessions.
“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,” says Trando. “Trainings in this new format turned out to be participant-friendly and relatively easy to install and conduct for our trainers.”
After a three-month trial period, Linux Polska transferred its proprietary training material to the IBM Cloud. Following a short lull in training due to the pandemic, things picked up again for the company at the end of 2020, and Trando and his team were 100% ready for the influx. Customers embraced the new model enthusiastically, and Trando and his team are busier than ever.
“Most of our clients have become convinced by this form of training and even started to value it more than the standard training provided in previous years in a traditional classroom format,” he explains. Not only are the new classes held in real time with full interaction between instructor and participants, but students now have access to labs and electronic manuals 24x7.
“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,” Trando concludes.
Established in 2009, Linux Polska (link resides outside of ibm.com) is an IT company based in Warsaw, Poland. It designs and creates its own open-source solutions in the areas of application containerization, hybrid cloud, DevOps, databases, middleware, IT automation and more. Linux Polska also provides consulting, implementation and maintenance services. Its experienced team of engineers has over 500 individual certifications.
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Produced in the United States of America, June 2021.
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