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Red Hat Certification Program For Education
Frank Caviggia writes "The Inquirer has a story up about Red Hat providing educational institutions with the ability to certify students as Red Hat Certified Technicians (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineers (RCHE) how this will relate to Microsoft's MSCE program. You can find the story here. Red Hat has more information on the program here."
So certification involves actually educating people now?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
OHavent we learned that people who get certs are just people who think they are computer geeks? I meean look at how well the MCSE has worked, Dont get me wrong, I think certs for some people can be good but over all they need to be better with more real world questions. And when they start giving out Certified C++ Expert I will be in line to get one But I think it is over rated to h8ave a Cert. Especially since 45% of the people with certs i know are Paper Certified.... Why start kids out like this? Let them choose for them selves!
---
They want to create a certification comparable to the MSCE? Gee... then we'll have have all these people with just a RHCT or RCHE admining linux boxes, and we'll have as many problems (DDOS zombies, etc.) as with the MCSEs admining windows boxes.
Certifications will help, but then people will think that that certification is _all_ that is needed to admin a linux box.
Will this turn into the same repetetive cash cow that the MCSE is? Will certified engineers have to get a new certification on every new release of the kernel? what about major releases?
I hope they realize that one of the major flaws with microsoft's certification is the necessity to get re-certified when a poorly-done ripoff of the previous operating system is released.
--My other sig is a ferrari.
It's funny. Laugh.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
Maybe Microsoft developed a new course, because last time I checked it was "MCSE". It stands for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer in case you were wondering.
Now all the wagon jumping paper tigers that swamped the IT world can move to Linux.
A large part of the state of job opportunities in the tech sector are the 5000 absolutely unqualified applicants for every job.
Pointy haired bosses don't know a good coder from a hole in the ground, so they hire the janitor-cum-MCP with the $20,000 salary expectation.
There are a few places left that look for someone who can do the job, and do it well, and don't give a hoot about alphabet soup and buzzwords in the resume.. I'm fortunate enough to have found one of them.
I should probably get back to work, I've wasted too much time here today.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It means that there will now be a flood of "Paper RHCEs" just as was the case with the MCSEs. But there will be a big difference.
The difference will be that few Slashdotters will ridicule the RHCEs as they have done the MCSEs. And, the Slashdotters that do ridicule them will be classified as jealous of the certification, since they do not have one. Then they will be modded down to minus one, much as I suspect this post will be.
5 -- Make a hat pattern out of the multiple choice fields
4 -- Copy off the smelly guy with the dandruff-coated black tee shirt
3 -- Bribe the proctor of the exam with a lunch that's "free as in beer"
2 -- emacs &... Edit... Query Replace... "MCSE, Red Hat Certified"
1 -- Insist on using the new open source Test Answer Development (TAD) model championed by Bruce Perens
Don't forget *nix.org either
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
That universities learn from the free software movement that knowledge is something that they can generate. I dont see whatsoever any value in giving any kind of certification to a student that is not involved in important admin tasks in a real datacenter. Come on, she'll go into the cert, finish it. Oh cool its friday! Go to a rave and kill most the synaptic connections given by the cert in the first two hours. With some luck (and here is the upside), our very hypothetical geek will get laid and on and on and on until they finish their degree....
Certs provide no value to kids in school. Abstract math, the study of algorithms, the understanding of the engeneering process behinf organizations like IETF, W3C do provide it....quit loosing time colleges, educate ppl. Certs are for lame professionals that lost the next wave (which is most of us, at some point anyway).
NO SIG
You guys can bash certifications left and right, but to a new graduate desperately looking for a job, they can prove useful. The job market is so bad at the moment that recent college graduates applying for entry-level positions are competing with people that have decades of experience. If having "RHCT" or "RCHE" on your resume can help, it's worth investing a couple of hundred bucks into it.
Being a CS student at a university, almost every semester we have to write a program or more on a linux server (I believe they are running RH 7.2 or 7.3). Thats for the first few CS classes, then in the upperclassmen classes, the servers are handled more for a few classes. Namely Network Security. Just think, if the students who took network security, also were RedHat certified, that would have a big impact on resumes. Looking at the description, I can see where this certification could come in handy for me or other CS students. I would take the class, if my university offered it. I could see that if CS took this certification, a job would almost be guarrenteed.
Certification has pluses and minuses for employees and employers alike, the real winners turn out to be the Cerifying organization. So, why not? Let's start "Billy The Mountain's Certified Information Technology Professional" program. "What, you say you're not BTMCITP? Gedowwdahea!"
Step 1. We'll charge $400 a pop, with a $50 annual maint. fee
Step 2. ????
Step 3. Marvel at how it's just like were printing our own money.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I thought engineering was something you had to go to college for, not some 'school' in a strip mall that does computer 'certs'.
THese are all people who think WIndows98 is the last product MS released. Bah.
clearly, you have a dizzying intellect..
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Theres an interesting comaprison between the benfefits that Red Hat perceives that can be gained through taking their course and Microsofts idea of the benefits you get for its MCSE.
Its an interesting contrast of philosophys, Red Hat stresses its IT benefits, whereas Microsoft seems to stress the special offers that come free with the course.
Apparently you get a free badge with the Microsoft cereal, I think I know which one I'm going to be buying.
What's interesting to me is that if somebody fails the RHCE exam but gets all the RHCT portions of the RHCE exam correct, they still don't earn an RHCT. Red Hat hasn't quite figured this one out yet. I asked this question during one of RH's webcast presentations, and they said they didn't have plans at that time for implementing a "partial credit" solution.
Although I can see how in a given real-world scenario, one would expect an RHCE to perform a longer list of tasks in a given time frame (be they troubleshooting, installation, service configuration, etc.) than an RHCT, it still doesn't make sense to me why one wouldn't be able to walk away with at least the RHCT if they had performed well enough to have passed the RHCT exam. Instead, they would have to pay more to take the RHCT exam separately.
I'm not sure why this issue is important to me, except that I think it would be neat to earn the RHCE. I can't think of any other IT certs that employ any kind of partial credit system.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
A person with a BSCS may be able to program a 2000 line program, but give them a problem to fix on a 200,000 program and they are dead.
All a degree or certification does is state that the person has taken course work and exams that show they they knew some knowledge at some point. It is not an end-all-be-all determination of skill. It is only one aspect to look at when determining a persons ability.
Fight Spammers!
A quick google search on "engineer certification illegal microsoft" turns this up as the first hit:
A general rule, though, is that one must hold a PE to legally represent themselves as engaged in practice of "professional engineering". (Some states take it as far as making it illegal to use the word "Engineering" in the name of a company unless a PE is one of the principals. That sounds pretty strong, but it's not very well known, and can only be addressed after someone files a complaint about it with that state's Board of Registration for Professional Engineers.)
(1) a four-year engineering degree in a program approved by the state engineering licensure board, (2) four years of qualifying engineering experience, and who successfully completes (3) the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Examination, and (4) the eight- hour Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) Examination will be licensed as a professional engineer.
In Canada, you can't use the term "engineer" unless you have an engineering degree. The only exceptions are for train engineers, forestry engineers, and a few others. Software Enginner IS NOT a permitted term. I've met w. the local governing body to discuss this last year.
Having said that, anyone paying $$$ thinking that having an "engineering cert" from RH or MS is fucking brain-dead anyway, and deserves to lose their money and their time.
First, we can consider it to be a learning opportunity, which it isn't. It's an opportunity to be brainwashed and turned into a mindless employee. That is, of course, assuming it goes Microsoft's route.
But, we can see this as an opportunity to get a title that will help you get a job, where you can do some real learning. Way I see it, if you take the cert, get a job, and study a LOT, you can actually get somewhere. And by somewhere, I don't mean a trailer. I mean SOMEWHERE!
Of course, being the everything-hater I am, I have to say that the idea of an open-source cert is sort of weird. When I say weird, I mean extremely ugly. That's just a pet peeve of mine.
"I see Windows users..."
There was a time when being an MCP/MSCE *actually* was worthwhile. Before every fly-by-night tech education company realized they could make a buck off the courseware and flooded the market with paper-cert toting meta-geeks. I see this as a good thing. Anything that RH does to expand awareness of its products ultimately helps the whole OSS & FSF idealogies through a trickle down effect.
Certifications like the CompTIA certs do not carry much value to techies, but may mean alot to that HR rep.
If you don't have the right alphabet soup at the top of your resume, that HR person may very well throw away your resume, even if you have years of experience.
That said, I don't have a certification, and I still don't have a job after looking since November. I'm looking into getting a RHCE and CompTIA to help me get past the HR level.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
My high school offered a two year course that would allow the students to get cisco certification. Unfortuanatly the instructor found a different job (better pay now that he had cisco certification, paid for by the school) after the first year, so we ended up with a dumbass history teacher that thought he was a computer genius for the second year.
Back when brainbench was doing the free cert thing, I noticed they had a cert for AOL User. I couldn't resist taking it, even though I hadn't used AOL for nearly 6 years.
:)
I passed it, and got the cert in the mail. It's a great conversation piece. "Certified AOL User"
...if linux is going to make it in major corporations. It's a quick, easy way for lazy managers to determine employee performance. Just like linux needs office software optimised for making Lovely Documents containing data that could be easier read/manipulated in .txt files. There's a whole class of people who don't do any useful work beyond making sure the rest of us do, and as silly as it sounds Microsoft makes it easier for them to do this. To summarize: Managers like certs, managers authorize software purchases, we want Linux software purchased, so certs are good.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...or it will be DOA.
The MCSE is an almost useless cert to go and get if you plan to work in a modern IT department. Due to Microsoft concetrating generating revenue from it's MCSE progrsam and not really worrying about creating truly knowledgable sysadmins the MCSE will get you a 30K job (or less) on a Helpdesk as a mouth-breathing card reader. Unfortunately, the cert mills and Microsoft itself sell this useless stack of papers as keys to the server room, where you will know better than the guys who have been staying up all night for years in there putting on security patches, hotfixes, service packs and upgrades that are wildly different from one another. It ain't so, sorry, thanks for playing.
Red Hat, on the other hand, has a chance to create some truly educated people in their cert program, and if they do, they will definitely be able to get their foot in more doors. But if they just create a bunch of wild-eyed know-it-all evangalizers (read: sales people) who just know how to spin up an install and then run the graphical version of Up2Date, then it will be as big a waste of time as Micro$ofts.
Of course, all IT groups are managed by MCSE's (Magazine Certified Stupid Engineers) who read the rags and think that it would be oh so easy to go and migrate from Progress to Oracle, AND implement SAP in a single evening of downtime!
I'm a RHCE (2 years ago), MCSE (6 or 7 years ago), and a CCNP. The new MCSE exams are a good bit deeper than the earlier tests that were very easy. The RHCE is a good lab exam, but mainly focuses on supporting small Linux servers in a pretty rigid setup. It doesn't really cover managing a large Linux network, like some of the MCSE tests cover.
Is the RHCE worth it? It's a good cert and until it gets washed out, it has value. But don't worry, when it gets popular you'll see cheat sheets and answer books just like you do with the MCSE. The exam will always be based on the RedHat classes, which can be reduced down to only the facts needed.
I did not take any Red Hat classes when I took my exam...in fact, I was the only one out of 8 that didn't. I got a 98% on the exam while some of the people who took the training were taking it their 2nd time. I think those guys passed when I was there, but I wouldn't want them on my servers....
I think they should call them Certified Linux / Unix Engineers. Who could resist the acronym?
Perhaps it's just my current location (Kentucky) that has me thinking this, but when it's all said and done and you've got your shiny new Red Hat Certification, how many companies are going to know or even care about it's importance? Linux is growing more and more efficient, and, as such, being used by more and more companies. But it's still just a drop in the bucket. I'm sure there's many a company that hasn't heard of Red Hat (or Mandrake, SuSE, blah blah blah), or at least there was prior to IBMs pushing of it onto the airwaves. I suppose what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of companies blinded by the famous MCSE that this "newfangled RHCE" won't mean a jot to them.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
One of the arguments people give me as to why they don't want to switch their shop over to Linux is because 'The learning curve is just too great.' They feel that they have too much time and money invested in learning Windows.
Making Linux training available cheaply gives Linux more credibility and at the same time removes one of the main reasons I've heard for not adopting it.
Well done Red Hat!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Well, I'll cover some ground already mentioned and say that for someone coming out of high-school or college and in need of a Systems job, either MCSE or RHCE could be just what the doctor ordered. I think I heard $3200 overall for becoming an RHCE (If you get it on your first try, that is). Sure, it's a little steep, but it's probably one of the best investments towards your future you could make.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
I don't think so. When I did it, there were 9 of us doing it. 8 sysadmins with 2-5 years experience and 1 hobbyist. 4 passed, other 5 guys failed on the first, troubleshooting, part. There are so many different details introduced that it would be extremelly hard to create 'good' cram papers and have significant passing rate this way. Of course, you'll always get few random guys who are lucky/able to do this but nowhere near the MCSE numbers.
I agree with on your points except for where you say"Pointy haired bosses don't know a good coder from a hole in the ground, so they hire the janitor-cum-MCP with the $20,000 salary expectation."
Last time I checked an MCP had nothing to do with punching code.
A systems engineer and a coder or two very different animals.
A coder might do a little admin and and an admin might code a little. But otherwise on two seperate ends of the spectrum. Not a very good comparison.
I have also had the pointy haired bosses who have hired utter embeciles as admins. But also cause they listened to the stringy haired coders who thought cause they could could they were admin gods as well.
I am a RHCE, MCSE,MCSA,CCNA, A+ and NET+
RHCE - A little difficlut but if you have the Unix experience and study hard you can pass it.
MCSE 2000 - Well the MCSE NT 4 was a joke. The 2000 track(if you dont use cheats) recquires a lot of study and experience to pass. Active Directory and Migration are two hard topics. Yeah, people used the cheats, but I tell you, I just took the AD 2000 examn, and it was no joke. Don't punish us MCSEs who actually know what they are doing.
A+ If you need to study for this, you need to choose another field. But their is a lotta cumaltive knowledge here.
Net+ A very good primer before you hit the CCNA if your only experience is your home network.(which 90% of the people in the world makes them gurus cause they got a speedstream router with a web based admin) but I would reccomend it to anyone who wanted to get into networking.
CCNA - Best beginners network course there is. Learn the theory and you will go far.
My problem with Linux admins is this. They consistently dog MS and their products when 90% of them do not know enough about them. Like any OS you have to live it and breath it to know it. And Windows 2000 is a damned fine product if you know how to admin it. Many don't. And people on the nix side dont tend to learn. I run headless 2000 servers, yep no gui, i turn it on when i need to do something. Always astound people when they see this.
MS Admins, are very inflexible, reboot and restore seems to be their main fixes for all. Instead of installing right the first time and doing the maintenance.
I use *nix and Windows for different things. Each has its good and bad. But a mentor of mine told me that the best way is to learn them all and take from each. That is what I have done. FUD is for children.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Red Hat has had information on their web site regarding Red Hat Academy for some time... but they are just getting it rolling... and haven't really announced it in a big way.
I passed the RHCE back in April of 2002 and I know that the RHCE program is a high quality program... especially the test.
I happen to work for a college in Montana and I was interested in learning what it would take to get Red Hat Academy / RHCT training and testing in our area... hoping to eventually turn it into an RHCE training program (not currently in Red Hat's cards). After talking to Joel Jackson (I think that was his name) in the Sales department... he emailed me a PDF with the details.
First year cost:
$15,000 for training - 2 RHCE Instructors and 1 RHCE Administrator
$22,000 for a year of Red Hat Academy curriculum, support, manuals, distribution, etc.
So... the first year investment is $37,000
Additional years are $22,000 (unless you lost your trained people and need to train more).
I wonder if that $22,000 figure is negotiable? That is good for up to 5,000 students per year.
They only allow non-profit educational institutions (high schools, colleges, universities, etc) in the Red Hat Academy program... and while they say you can charge the student a fee (call it whatever you want... book fee, lab fee, etc) they really don't give you any guidelines as to what you can charge... except that Red Hat wants $150 for each test administered. How much do you charge for tests? Again, that's up to your institution.
Being from a small college in Montana, $37,000 is a sizable first year investment. It wouldn't be any big deal if we could get 500 students interested in the program... but that would be a real challenge. Considering the fact that Red Hat is "planting seeds" with the Academy program... you'd think the seeds would be cheaper... or that they'd have a program priced close to cost. I have no idea how much it will take Red Hat to administer. I'm sure it is a quality program, judging by the RHCE.
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
Certs are beneficial in 2 ways. 1. To me. I am CCNA MCSE and CNE - with each cert I am percieved as more valuable to my company. They offered me a $2000 bonus to get my last cert - the CNE. (and immediatly after that they decided to scrap netware in exchange for Win2k) Whether or not I learn anything from the tests is up to me. Personally I got the most out of my MCSE courses. 2. My company can bill me at higher rates due to my "credentials". More money for them more money for me. And yes you do learn things in these courses. Go take one. Whether you understand this or not - percieved value is more worthwhile than intrinsic value when you are looking for a job or a raise. Personally I feel I could do just as good a job without these certs but I understand I live on planet earth and use them to my advantage. For those of you complaining about how certs are so worthless - go back to your job hunt. P.S. I am in the process of recertifying on MCSE before I set my sites on the Red Hat course.
Candidate is in front of the screen that tells him what he is supposed to do as an outcome. It's all nice and easy but when you press to continue, machine doesn't even boot. So, to even get to the point where he can do what he'd been asked to, he has to fix couple or more other problems. That's pretty tough cookie to byte into if you've never fixed Linux machine before and all your learning was done reading exam cram book.
BTW, you have to byte into the cookie 4 times in 2 hours and to fix at least 2 problems, to continue with the exam. The hairy bit is that you have to complete other 2 sections with the avg. score of 95%. Answering multi-choice questions - maybe. But completing 95% correct last part - configure fully functional Red Hat server and provide range of services from it... I sincerely doubt it.
I still think paper RHCE is not possible.
I got my RHCE two years ago. I got a 98% overall, so I'm very familiar with the exam. But honestly, the troubleshooting was the easiest part. All of the fixes were straight out of the normal "how to repair a Linux box" chapters in the study guides. They were almost covered word for word from the class manual that someone gave me.
The application setup also wasn't difficulet. You never really had to think up a new way to do things... It was all spelled out in the class manuals or the basic "how to set things up" chapters. Several of the app setups were the defaults when the RPM was installed!
Some of the people in my exam were taking it their 2nd and 3rd time. I think they finally passed, but in my eyes they are already paper RHCEs. I wouldn't let them touch my systems. They finally learned the test, not the material.
As a junior engineer, I'm not too happy with the loose use of the word "engineer"
. ht ml
The title of engineer should only be bestowed upon those with enough knowledge, experience, and professional accountability to certify the proper performance of any system whether mission-critical or not.
You don't acquire those skills in a strip mall, and Canadian Law sure as hell doesn't give you any professional accountability.
Anyway, here is the press release that the parent post was referring to:
For immediate release
OIQ advises MCSE holders NOT to use the term engineer
Montreal, August 13, 2002 - Due to Microsoft Canada's recent announcement that the company will continue to use the term engineer as part of its Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) designation, the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ) is advising MCSE holders that they are subject to the laws of Quebec and will be prosecuted should they improperly represent themselves to the public as engineers.
"Microsoft Canada has left us no choice," says OIQ president, Gaétan Lefebvre, Eng. "The term engineer and the engineering profession itself are strictly regulated across Canada - just like the legal and medical professions. Last year, Microsoft agreed to advise their Canadian holders of the MCSE certification not to call themselves engineers or use the full title. Now that they've reversed their decision, we will enforce the Province's Engineers Act and Professional Code. These two laws are very clear and were in force long before Microsoft ever existed. In Québec, the OIQ is responsible for their enforcement."
According to section 22.2 of the Engineers Act (R.S.Q., c. I-9):
22. Any person not a member in good standing of the Order who:
(1) [...];
(2) assumes the title of engineer alone or qualified, or makes use of any abbreviation of such title, or of any name, title or designation which might lead to the belief that he is an engineer or a member of the Order,
(3) advertises himself as such,
(4) acts in such a manner as to lead to the belief that he is authorized to fulfil the office of or to act as an engineer,
(5) [...],
is guilty of an offence and is liable to the penalties provided in section 188 of the Professional Code (chapter C-26).
And, according to sections 32 and 188 of the Professional Code (c. C-26):
32. No person shall claim in any manner to be an advocate, notary, physician, dentist, pharmacist, optometrist, veterinary surgeon, agrologist, architect, engineer, land-surveyor, forest engineer, chemist, chartered accountant, radiology technologist, denturologist, dispensing optician, chiropractor, hearing-aid acoustician, podiatrist, nurse, acupuncturist, bailiff or midwife, or use one of the above titles or any other title or abbreviation which may lead to the belief that he is one, or initials which may lead to the belief that he is one, or engage in a professional activity reserved to the members of a professional order, claim to have the right to do so or act in such a way as to lead to the belief that he is authorized to do so, unless he holds a valid, appropriate permit and is entered on the roll of the order empowered to issue the permit, unless it is allowed by law.
The prohibition relating to the use of any titles, abbreviations or initials mentioned in the first paragraph or in an Act constituting a professional order extends to the use of such titles, abbreviations and initials in a feminine form.
188.Every person who contravenes a provision of this Code, of the Act or letters patent constituting an order or of an amalgamation or integration order is guilty of an offence and is liable to a fine of not less than $600 nor more than $6 000.
"Engineers have an enormous responsibility to the public" explains Mr Lefebvre. "When engineers create a design and build such things as superstructures, airplanes, computerized control systems and highways, public safety and confidence are at stake. People trust engineers because they have a permit to practice engineering, and such trust is vitally important. The public has a long history of respect for professionals with a reserved title. It's also why governments across Canada have entrusted the responsibility of regulating the practice of the engineering profession to the organizations that govern the profession in each province, and for Québec, that is the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec."
The OIQ President continued: "Becoming an engineer is not just a matter of completing a few days or weeks of studies, as Microsoft suggests when it promotes its MCSE certification. In fact, at a meeting in their offices in Seattle, Microsoft officials openly admitted to officials from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) that their MCSE training program is in no way comparable to an academic engineering program. In Quebec, there are a number of laws and regulations governing the engineering profession. All this extensive legislation is based on the principle of protecting the public. That is the OIQ's principal function, and its primary concern is to verify the skills of those who apply for admission to its ranks."
Only persons who hold a permit to practice issued by OIQ and are registered on its membership roll as engineers can use this strictly reserved title. Once engineers receive their permit to practice and thus the right to use this professional title, they are required to adhere to a professional code of ethics and demonstrate continued competency in their field of expertise.
To date, in all cases where OIQ has taken legal action against the unlawful use of the title of engineer, the individuals charged have been found guilty. The OIQ President concluded: "When the OIQ learns of people violating the Engineers Act by not being registered on the roll of members, we see that they are prosecuted. They are not entitled to use the title of engineer, which has been strictly reserved for the members of OIQ. These violators run the risk of being fined."
The Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ) regulates and governs the practice of engineering in the province in accordance with the Engineers Act. OIQ has over 45,000 members and is affiliated with the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE,) which represents some 160,000 engineers across Canada.
The full text of the Engineers Act and the Professional Code of Québec can be consulted on the OIQ Web site at www.oiq.qc.ca.
For information:
Danielle Frank, ARP
Conseiller en communications
Direction des affaires corporatives
Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec
Tel. (514) 845-6141 or 1 800 461-6141, ext. 111
http://www.peo.on.ca/enforcement/OIQ_Aug12_2002
Gads, I hope they are not telneting into routers. As long as you can spell, shouldn't be a problem sniffing out those passwords.
...have differing levels of importance.
I recently moved from the UK to the Middle East. The situation in the Gulf States such as Qatar, Oman, the UAE, etc, is that the local citizens of each state make up, on average, about 20% of the population of the country. 'Locals', meaning the indigenous Arab population, generally work for the government in managerial positions and the majority of hands on IT work is performed by people from every country in the world, from Kyrgystan to South Africa, to Great Britain, to Somalia, to India and everywhere in between.
Certifications in this region are extremely important. As a manager looking to employ someone, whether in a small or large company, you have to have some benchmark to use before you even interivew someone for a hands on IT role as you have no way of knowing what the general standard is in Iran, or Somalia or England, so there is no point interviewing everyone who claims they have a CS degree from the University of Tehran or Dundee or Hyderabad followed by sys admin experience at the Al Eadffg Coat Factory - it simply means nothing to you.
So, you need some kind of benchmark from which to work up from.
If you need an MS admin, you start off with people who are MS certified. If you need Sun skills you interview only those with Sun certification. Clearly a good manager will try and delve a little more deeply into what each individual can actually do and make a decision based on the results.
As an Englishman, I'd be happy accepting a CV from someone from the UK without certification as I could look at a CV and make some judgements based on my own experience as to whether they are worth interviewing. We'd speak the same language and would have had similar experiences which would let me make that judgement. For other nationalities, I'd expect to start with at least some kind of 'official' level of skill and take things from there.
Equally, an Indian manager wouldn't trust a UK CV - and quite rightly so - as they don't have the experience to judge what a UK guy's CV *really* means.
So, even though the certification doesn't guarantee that the guy can do as much as someone without a certification, it gives one a good basis on which to work from.
Linux is taking off here as everyone is obsessed with price and since Linux is 'free' it must be a good thing to use.
So Red Hat are right on the nail in producing a 'benchmark' which the guys with the budgets and the influence can use when looking for potential employees.