Red Hat Announces RHCEs of the Year

At the Red Hat Summit 2007, the achievements of Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCEs) from around the world were honored for the second consecutive year. RHCE of the Year awards were granted to three individuals – one each from North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

The RHCE of the Year award gives Red Hat an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of three extremely resourceful and capable individuals whose winning submissions highlight the value of the Red Hat certifications for the enterprise, the career and the community. The awards also recognize the contributions of our certified community as a whole. Participants were self-nominated via the online application and were required to submit a response to the question: “why should you be considered RHCE of the Year?” in 1,000 words or less.

Winners of the RHCE of the Year 2007 title were invited to the third annual Red Hat Summit in San Diego, CA last week and were recognized through an awards ceremony for Red Hat certified professionals.

This year’s winners are:

• Rob Bridal
  Associated Network Partners, Inc
  Springfield, IL
• Thandava Krishnan Saidapet Padmanabhan
  Institute for Infocomm Research
  Singapore
• Palwindera Jeet Singh Mandla
  RM, PLC
  UK

With the help of IT training, Rob Bridal was able to make a successful switch from a job on an assembly line to a job as a manager within a telecommunications company. He noted in his submission that the RHCE certification didn’t help him climb the ladder, but rather introduced him to a new one.

The winner from Asia-Pacific, Thandava Krishnan Saidapet Padmanabhan, is using his RHCE knowledge to make the blood donor recruitment program of the Singapore Red Cross more efficient.

Palwindera Jeet Singh Mandla from the UK has been able to drastically reduce environment rebuild times to under an hour. His company, RM, is the leading provider of complete IT solutions for the British education industry.

Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certifications are awarded for successful completion of challenging performance- based tests that measure actual competency on live systems. RHCE was recently named the hottest certification in all of IT by CertCities.com. In March, Red Hat announced it had awarded over 25,000 RHCE certifications.

For more information on the contest, see here.