“Planet Takes Linux Lead with GBDirect”
“GBdirect and Planet Online, both leading players in the
European market for Linux skills and services, today announced what
is believed to be the UK’s biggest ever Linux training programme.
Over the next six weeks, 60 delegates from Planet Online will
attend GBdirect’s basic, intermediate and advanced courses in Linux
Systems Administration. The students will be engineers and
technical staff from Planet’s Leeds headquarters, the home of
Freeserve, and already the greatest concentration of Linux
expertise in Europe.”
“Dave Fisher, Head of Business Development at GBdirect, made it
clear that he saw the programme as more than just a for-money
contract. He commented: ‘A few weeks ago I saw a full-page article
in the IT press, proclaiming no commercial demand for Linux
training. Linux specialists, like ourselves and Planet, know that’s
nonsense, but we need big projects like this to get the wider IT
community to wake-up and smell the bacon.’ According to him,
GBdirect’s Linux training has already expanded beyond small
in-house projects, into large and public events like this and their
forthcoming courses on integrating Linux with Windows/NT.”
“Planet’s staff are already amongst the most skilled and
experienced users of Linux and UNIX, as David Earnshaw, HR director
at Planet explains: ‘We are committing our staff to this programme
because we want to maintain our leadership in this field. There is
demand and we need to meet it with a high level of expertise and
support. We want to ensure that we are all speaking the same
dialect of UNIX and that every one of us is up-to-date on the very
latest developments in Linux administration.'”