Global Knowledge announced a worldwide partnership that will allow the company to apply its strengths as an education solutions provider in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, by offering virtualization training on VMware. Virtualization training is a growing requirement for IT departments in businesses of all sizes. Global Knowledge is a VMware Authorized Training Center (VATC) partner throughout North America, the Middle East, and many European countries.

"We are committed to helping our customers with focused, hands-on virtualization training. With training programs that are consistent, effective, and taught by real-world experts, we can help companies with the successful deployment of their virtualization strategies," said Global Knowledge President and CEO Joe Cece.

"Demand is significantly growing for customer and channel partner VMware training," said Jason Martin,Vice President, VMware Professional Services. "As an industry leader with a worldwide footprint, Global Knowledge is uniquely positioned to help meet the huge training demand through solutions that help our customers and partners deploy our software and enable our company's continued leadership in virtualization solutions."

With 2007 revenues of USD 1.3 billion, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. VMware's server and desktop virtualization software helps IT departments turn single physical machines into several virtual ones running side-by-side, there by giving IT professionals greater resource utilization and flexibility.

Global Knowledge is currently delivering VMware training internationally in both public classroom settings and in private, customer on-site training venues. "We've been offering VMware courses in EMEA since April of this year and have seen a rapid growth in the popularity of VMware training," said Richard Pryor-Jones, President, Global Knowledge EMEA. "We are committed to meeting the increasing demand from the market for training solutions in the field of virtualization."

Global Knowledge expects virtualization to emerge in the years ahead as a fundamental IT building block that will catapult the demand for knowledge and skills in the use of virtualization hardware and software products and services. The company currently offers virtualization training from a variety of leading software vendors.