Linux Academy Opens Online Training for Amazon Web Services
According to many surveys, there is a huge gap between supply and demand of IT professionals. Companies are struggling to keep up with the explosion of cloud technologies and new business opportunities due to lack of a skilled workforce.
To help with this issue, online training firm Linux Academy launched the Cloud Assessments program, which provides a way allows enterprises to test and train their IT teams, as well as prospective job candidates. Individuals can also leverage Cloud Assessments to prove real, hands-on skill and earn micro certifications. The first Cloud Assessment offerings will focus on Amazon Web Services.
“There is a general skills gap across much of the technology industry. We performed a survey not too long ago, and found that a significant number of employers had a hard time finding employees with sufficient skills in Linux and cloud computing,” said Anthony James, Linux Academy founder and CEO.
According to this recent survey of more than 6,000 IT professionals, the average person takes weeks or even months to get up to speed on a new company’s technology stack. “Cloud Assessments can drastically reduce this time by ensuring that new hires not only understand but are able to effectively work with a company’s technology before they start,” said James.
These companies have two options, either train existing employees or fire them and hire new ones. Since there is already a dearth of skill sets, there are not enough engineers to hire. More than 65 percent of companies surveyed by Linux Academy said that they have a hard time recruiting these professionals, so there’s a big opportunity for advancement through training.
In a nutshell, training the existing employees is the easiest approach.
“With growing demand and skills gaps in the industry, we see companies turning towards Linux Academy to help with employee training and skill development to promote from within. We also see lots of our students using Linux Academy as a tool to acquire a position with a new company given the shortage of Linux and cloud professionals,” said James.
For the AWS course, Cloud Assessments allows enterprises use to test, train and gauge real AWS knowledge of staff and job candidates, as well as for individuals to prove skills and earn micro certifications. Rather than using traditional Q&A based assessments, Cloud Assessments uses real-world scenarios and actual cloud environments, James said.
In the future, the platform will enable enterprises to assign assessments to users. In addition to it speeding up their hiring processes, companies can use Cloud Assessments to train AWS skills, fostering advancement from within.
Cloud Assessments uses real-world scenarios and actual cloud environments.
As far as cloud platforms are concerned, initially Linux Academy is focusing on AWS because it’s the largest skill gap when it comes to cloud technology, though over time, Linux Academy may also cover Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Who is It for?
Linux Academy is working with companies like Rackspace and others to ensure that its micro certifications bring professional validity in the industry.
At the moment, you can take many assessments and labs at no cost. “We have designed the platform in a cost-effective way, which means these savings are transferred to anyone looking for training,” said James.
The Linux Academy Cloud Assessments engine.
Cloud Assessment is one of the many programs that Linux Academy offers to enterprises. It also offers to enterprise customers Teams, which is designed to keep team’s skills up to date on Linux, AWS, OpenStack, DevOps and other cloud-based technologies; it allows enterprises access to Linux Academy’s full library of content, including thousands of videos, hands-on labs, and six cloud servers for the team training.
The Teams programs are managed through a dedicated dashboard that allows training managers to view a summary of a team’s overall training performance and train team members for specific roles, tasks, and responsibilities.
With the custom learning paths feature, training can be assigned to groups or individuals and assessed throughout its duration with prompt support from instructors. Users can add full lessons, quizzes, hands-on labs, and assessments to their custom learning paths. With the labs and exercises features, users get hands-on, scenario-based labs for experience in real environments.
