1/1/2002 -- Linux is booming, and the competition runs high among those offering professional certifications in the open-source operating system. Certification vendors seem to think the market is limitless, but some analysts suggest the industry may yet see a shakeout.

On the one hand, the demand for Linux training is expected to swell from $100 million in 2001 to $250 million by 2004. Yet this still is a mere drop in the bucket: The market for Microsoft training stands at $1.8 billion at present -- nearly 18 times larger. Moreover, "not everyone who trains on [Linux] will want certification," noted Michael Brennan, a senior analyst at research firm IDC. "So we are not really talking about that large a market."

Meanwhile, at least four major certifying bodies are vying for a slice of that pie. CompTIA offers an entry-level exam called Linux+, while software vendor Red Hat provides an advanced-level, lab-based title in support of its flavor of Linux. Two other entities offer multi-tiered, vendor-neutral certifications: the non-profit Linux Professional Institute (LPI) and the for-profit Sair Linux.

For now, most of the analysts we talked with predicted that the market -- while currently small -- is enough that these programs should continue to grow in the near future. "None of these are big companies... I would assume there would be enough work to go around," said Bill Claybrook, research director for Linux at Aberdeen Group in Boston. He noted in particular that LPI is a nonprofit organization, "which leaves only two profit-making companies certifying for Linux around the United States [beyond CompTIA's basic-level test]. I certainly would not think that that is too many," he said.

Yet the Linux certification market has already seen its first casualty. ProsoftTraining.com provided its own vendor-neutral certification until 1999, at which time it terminated its own exam and signed on in support of the LPI effort. "Since Prosoft does not specialize in Linux certification, it would have been an upstream battle for them to compete directly with LPI," suggested Stacey Quandt, associate analyst with the research firm Giga Information Group.

Among those still standing, Red Hat holds the pinnacle position at the moment: Some 6,700 people have taken the test since January 1999 and 3,700 have passed, according to Peter Childers, Red Hat's vice president of global learning services.

By comparison, SAIR has certified some 1,900 people on its first tier, and about 1,000 people hold the LPI Level-1 credential -- although demand there is picking up fast. In just the month of September 2001, LPI delivered some 700 tests, according to LPI President Chuck Mead.

This order of precedence -- Red Hat by a wide margin, followed by Sair and LPI -- should hardly come as a surprise. After all, Red Hat products account for 85 to 90 percent of all commercial Linux systems in use today. That kind of market dominance gives Red Hat a significant edge in the competition among certifying bodies, analysts say.

And Red Hat has a natural edge, in so far as it provides not just certification, but also training and product support, the analysts told us. As the leading vendors compete for market share in the Linux certification business, "the determining factor will be the services that they provide around it," predicted Robert Perry, senior analyst with the Yankee Group.

Brennan, for example, looks to the training agencies for indications as to which certifications are the most widely accepted. "After all, you are only going to be able to certify people who are trained, so the marketing effort they gear toward the training providers will be a good indicator of which one will survive," he said.

By this logic, SAIR should hold the number two spot by virtue of its training regimen. And with its certification-only approach, meanwhile, LPI should trail these two. Does this mean LPI is effectively out of the running? Not by a long shot.

First, there's the issue of self study. CertCities.com Contributing Editor Greg Neilson notes that IT professionals cross training from other platforms won't necessarily need classroom education, so the availability and variety of self-study resources will be a factor "SAIR seem to have spread their exams over many of their own books, whereas there are already a number of good LPI resources," he commented.

And as Giga's Quandt points out, LPI already has a jump on close competitor SAIR in at least one important respect: LPI has already released its Level 2 exams. SAIR, on the other hand, has yet to release all of its level 2 tests.

"Obviously, whoever can offer a more comprehensive level of certification is going to find it easier to have that certification become part of someone's HR process," said Quandt. "If they can build up a pool of people who have the Level 2 certification ahead of SAIR, system vendors and potentially even employers will start to notice that, and perhaps make HR decisions that focus more on one than on the other."

Of course, ultimate fate of these programs may well be determined by the speed at which corporate America adopts the open source platform among its information systems. At this point, Linus Torvalds' brainchild is still running a long way behind Bill Gates' creations. The Yankee Group surveyed 150 organizations each with 500 or more employees, and only 11 percent said they are running Linux at this time. "Microsoft is still very strong within corporations and they will hold that overall position," said Yankee Group's Perry.

Linux is gaining, however. Most experts estimate there are about 10 million Linux users today, and some are even more bullish in their assessment. The Linux education resource MetaSystema!, for instance, states that there were already more than 7.5 million people working with Linux by the end of 1997, and that there may now be more than 30 million Linux users worldwide. In February 2001, Zona Research interviewed 109 companies and found that more than half expected to increase their Linux user base in the near future.

But will this growth automatically lead to an increase in Linux-certified professionals? Not necessarily. In the eyes of many corporate decision-makers, certification has become a sort of chicken/egg equation, according to Billy Ball, author of "Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed" and "Sam's Teach Yourself Red Hat Linux in 24 Hours."

In one sense, he said, computer professionals are looking to see some serious corporate usage of Red Hat or other distributions before they ante up for certifications. On the flip side, many corporations will hold off on their Linux implementations until they are sure there is a solid base of certified technicians out there to support the system. "Linux certification is a necessary ingredient to reassure the enterprise community that Linux really can be deployed. There are very few companies that would hire someone without some sort of yardstick, and they take some reassurance in seeing a string of acronyms following somebody's name," he said

As for which title will prevail, some analysts speculated that corporate America will be most willing to adopt whichever certification standard seems prevalent among its best-performing workers. "It does not have anything to do with advertising or marketing, but rather with the results that these certifying bodies can produce in the people they certify," said Aberdeen's Claybrook. "It happens almost by word of mouth. If you have great people working for you who were certified by [a particular certifying body], then you tell other people about that."

So in the end, it may be the individual IT professionals that hold the key to each program's survival. However, general acceptance of Linux certification by these professionals is one factor that's still up in the air. Brian J. Bork, a Linux-certified consultant and trainer who owns and operates Stormhawk TEC, a technology training firm in Appleton, Wisconsin, said that while Linux certification came naturally to him, that won't necessarily be the case for other IT professionals. "Being a Microsoft person I came from a very structured, certification-based world," he explained. In contrast, he said, "the general consensus in the Linux workplace is: 'We don't need a certification to prove that we know what we are doing.'"

He's also seen this resistance in the classroom. "As a trainer, I know that Linux certification is the furthest thing from my students' minds," he added. "They are just here to learn how to do their job better. But I tell them that if it is in the book, it is going to be on the test, which means this certification really does test you on things that you think are important to your job."

Whether or not the overall industry ever embraces them, Bork says that he's happy with his titles --- they're working for him. "My [certifications] get me in the door with organizations I would not ordinarily be able to get into," he said. "As a consultant the certification gives me the credentials I need to talk to companies that have Linux people and Linux machines, whereas without that [certification], they simply have no way of knowing whether or not somebody knows anything about Linux."

What's your take on this topic? Post your comments below!