Red Hat has launched a new training and certification program called the Red Hat Certified Architect Program in Telco Cloud.

The program is centered around the skills that telecom engineers need to build network functions virtualization (NFV) clouds, critical technologies that can help drive advanced services like 5G.

According to the company, the Telco Cloud Program consists of a certification path specifically recommended for professionals in the telecom industry that will lead to Red Hat Certified Architect in Infrastructure.

Participants are required to first become certified as Red Hat Certified Engineers, and then earn the following additional certifications: Red Hat Certified System Administrator in Red Hat OpenStack, Red Hat Certified Engineer in Red Hat OpenStack, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ceph Storage Administration, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation and Red Hat Certified Specialist in Configuration Management.

Rakuten Mobile Network is the first organization to take advantage of this program as it launches a fully virtualized, end-to-end cloud-native mobile network in Japan.