Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Names ProCert Labs As Official Review Body For New Approved Training Materials Program.

ProCert Labs providing quality assurance testing for LPI Approved Training Materials program.

ProCert Labs, the quality assurance standard for professional certification courseware, today announced an agreement with the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) to provide quality assurance testing of courseware products for the LPI Approved Training Materials (LATM) program.

The LPI Approved Training Materials (LATM) program, also announced today, is a quality assurance program designed to facilitate the development and promotion of approved third-party training materials that support LPI certifications. LPI’s initiative to establish approved training materials is a natural evolution of their popular certification program. Chuck Mead, president of LPI said, “The increasing popularity of our certifications has brought about the next phase of our program development; to facilitate the continued development and recognition of high quality training products that enable LPI certifications.” Approved training products will receive special recognition from LPI including the use of a promotional logo indicating the courseware’s approved designation. Training materials must accommodate several quality requirements in order to become approved, including 100 percent correlation to LPI certification exam objectives.

LPI chose ProCert Labs’ to provide quality assurance testing for the new program based on ProCert Labs’ commitment to unbiased, standards-based testing methodologies. “ProCert Labs has established an objective, consistent, vendor-neutral testing practice that supports our need to be inclusive across the industry.” stated Mead. In addition to conducting quality assurance testing on behalf of LPI, ProCert Labs will also assist LPI in developing a wider channel of courseware developers, and will support approved courseware through the online ProCert Directory and eMag publication to help ensure that teachers and students become aware of approved offerings.

“We are thrilled to be a part of LPI’s quality initiative, and to participate in the fast-growing community of Linux professional certifications.” noted Cary Snowden, president of ProCert Communications. “We are committing our support for LPI’s desire to bring quality courseware products to potential Linux certified candidates.”

ProCert Labs will contribute to LPI’s success by providing consistently reliable courseware reviews and by helping to promote products that meet expectations of quality. In addition to approval by LPI, courseware vendors who submit qualifying courseware will receive a host of benefits from ProCert Labs including product listings, product reviews and confidential QA reports that identify product strengths and weaknesses.

ProCert Labs is authorized to review print, CBT, Web-based, instructor-led, video and even PDA-based courseware for LPI. In support of LPI’s worldwide certification initiative, ProCert Labs will conduct reviews in multiple languages including English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Korean, Spanish and Japanese. Courseware publishers wishing to participate in the LPI program can submit courseware to ProCert Labs for testing effective immediately.

About ProCert Labs
ProCert Labs is the quality assurance standard for professional certification courseware. ProCert Labs is a team of qualified instructional design experts with extensive experience in designing IT-related courseware. ProCert Labs does not publish courseware or compete with courseware vendors, and uses specialized Web-based tools to manage and conduct secure and confidential testing. Testing evaluations conducted by ProCert Labs are non-biased, vendor-independent assessments of quality. ProCert Labs reviews are based on a standardized testing process that is applied in a consistent methodology to ensure fair and accurate results. For more information about ProCert Labs, visit www.procertlabs.com .

About LPI
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) develops professional certification for the Linux operating system independent of software vendors or training providers. Established as an international non-profit organization in 1999 by the Linux community, LPI develops accessible, internationally-recognized certification programs which have earned the respect of vendors, employers and administrators. LPI's activities involve hundreds of volunteers and professionals throughout the world in many different capacities, and the group encourages active public involvement through mailing lists and its website at www.lpi.org. LPI's multi-level program of exams is administered globally through 2,800 test centers operated by Virtual University Enterprises (VUE), a division of NCS. LPI's major financial sponsors are Platinum Sponsors Caldera International (NASDAQ:CALD), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Linuxcare, Maxspeed, SGI (NYSE:SGI), SuSE Linux AG and TurboLinux as well as Gold Sponsors Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP) and Wave Technologies.

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