Sybase SA was named the winner out of 250 partners in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, after achieving outstanding results in the second annual Red Hat training partner of the year award.

Red Hat aims to promote and reward its training partners that have distinguished themselves from the competition with remarkable performance over the year, growth of business and have showed a positive attitude to the promotion of Red Hat training and certification.

"Sybase has achieved a high level of performance this past year in the growth and promotion of Red Hat official training and certification exams," says Red Hat Global Learning Services EMEA Manager, Jasmine Huxtable-Wright. "Sybase has demonstrated its dedication to delivering the Red Hat official Linux curriculum and offering customers the Red Hat Certified Technician and Red hat Certified Engineer exams and we are very proud to be associated with Sybase."

"We have certainly seen an emerging trend over the last two years where interest in open source in the South African market is clearly growing," says Arnél Taute, Sybase SA's Training Manager. "Linux's impact in the server field is generating massive demand for certified Linux professionals and already this is reflected in the growing interest in Linux training and certification," she adds.

"What makes this achievement even more remarkable for us is that Sybase was only appointed the third official Red Hat certified training partner in South Africa and one of only two Linux Red Hat certified training partners in Gauteng during 2004," Taute points out."We are very proud that Red Hat has acknowledge our commitment to delivering high- quality certified training of an international standard," concludes Taute.