Red Hat, Inc., a leader in the open source sector, announced on Tuesday, that Orhan Bıyıklıoğlu, a system administrator at Istanbul-based Turkcell, is the 2017 Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year. The annual award honors a Red Hat Certified Professional (RHCP) who demonstrates ingenuity, hard work, and expertise, and was presented to Bıyıklıoğlu at Red Hat Summit 2017 in Boston.

Bıyıklıoğlu, an accomplished Red Hat professional, is currently a certified systems administrator (RHCSA) and a certified engineer (RHCE). He also has a Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Server Hardening. Bıyıklıoğlu has been an avid Red Hat Linux user since his time at Istanbul Technical University. Upon graduation he became a systems administrator and continues to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a daily basis in his position at Turkcell.

Randy Russell, director, Certification, Red Hat, congratulated Bıyıklıoğlu and described the award’s selection process. “We select the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year not only on the basis of their technical accomplishments and in-depth knowledge of Red Hat technologies, but also for their eagerness to share their knowledge with others.

“Orhan, both a Red Hat Certified Engineer and Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator, has introduced and helped run Red Hat technology at Turkcell. On behalf of all Red Hatters — congratulations, Orhan.”

Since joining Turkcell more than a decade ago, Bıyıklıoğlu has utilized his Red Hat training to help Turkcell design, implement, and maintain a robust and flexible IT infrastructure, while also achieving considerable cost savings. He successfully led the company’s migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux by designing and implementing server architecture to consolidate more than 20 critical database workloads running on more than 40 servers from different vendors.

Bıyıklıoğlu efforts have helped to alter Turkcell’s perception of Linux and, since then, the company has continued migrating most of their workload, even business critical tasks, from UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

“Orhan constantly challenges us with new technologies and new ideas,” said Utku Sert, director of Infrastructure Operations at Turkcell. “He constantly confronts us with his new ideas and motivates us to use them.”

Because of Bıyıklıoğlu’s leadership and vision, Turkcell is having success using a range of Red hat technologies including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Ansible by Red Hat.

“Red Hat certifications have a strong reputation and respect in the industry because they are performance based. The examinees must actually demonstrate their working knowledge and skills by accomplishing hands-on tasks during the exam, as they do in the workplace,” said Bıyıklıoğlu.

“I am very proud to be selected as the 2017 Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year and am grateful to my company, Turkcell, for supporting me to become Red Hat certified.”