As part of its strategic efforts to grow the OpenStack talent pool and global community, the OpenStack Foundation has announced a new professional certification program that is meant to provide a baseline assessment of knowledge and be accessible to OpenStack professionals around the world. OpenStack Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce announced during his keynote address marking the opening of the OpenStack Summit in Tokyo, Japan, that the first certification, Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA), will be available in 2016.

The Certified OpenStack Administrator is a professional typically with at least six months OpenStack experience and has the skills required to provide day-to-day operation and management of an OpenStack cloud.

There are dozens of companies around the world that currently offer OpenStack training, and representatives from that ecosystem across 10 countries have been involved in a community working group to help define skills and capabilities of a Certified OpenStack Administrator:

  • Asean Labs
  • Canonical
  • Cisco
  • Cloud Enabled
  • EMC
  • Firefly
  • HP
  • Midokura
  • Mirantis
  • Rackspace
  • SkyAtlas
  • Solinea
  • Stacklabs
  • SUSE

In addition to helping create the test curriculum and questions for the COA program, these companies will provide training and preparation for the COA test once it becomes available.

Certification testing will be administered with the help of the Linux Foundation, which has created a virtual testing platform, making it possible to access the COA test anywhere in the world at an affordable cost. Testing for COA is expected to be available in Q2 2016.

To find OpenStack training partners, visit the OpenStack Marketplace, which lists more than 20 training providers, many of whom also offer their own advanced or distro/product-specific certifications in addition to COA certification. The full list of training companies supporting the new certification are:

  • 99cloud
  • Aptira
  • AWcloud
  • Canonical
  • Cloud Enabled
  • Component Soft
  • Firefly
  • hastexo Academy
  • HP
  • Linux Academy
  • Linux Foundation
  • Midokura
  • Mirantis
  • Morphlabs
  • PLUMgrid
  • qSTC
  • Rackspace
  • Solinea
  • SwiftStack
  • SUSE
  • Tesora

“This OpenStack professional certification program addresses the need for well-trained and highly qualified OpenStack administrators,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “We expect COA certification to become a valuable credential that any hiring manager would want to see on the resume of viable candidate. Further, it is our hope that the OpenStack professional certification program will encourage new entrants into the OpenStack community and expand the talent pool within the industry.”

 

This article was originally posted “OpenStack Foundation Launches Professional Certification Program” from Cloud Strategy Magazine.