SUSE Funds Cloud-Native Skills Scholarships
SUSE has announced it is sponsoring 300 online education scholarships to provide aspiring practitioners with free access to a cloud-native education program, dubbed the Cloud Native Application Architecture Nanodegree program, delivered by Udacity, an online technology training and education provider.
In addition, SUSE and Udacity will also jointly grant free access to their first course in the program for up to 15,000 applicants.
The move to provide free education focused specifically on cloud-native technology skills comes on the heels of a recent report that suggests only a few thousand people are providing most of the support that IT organizations need to adopt, for example, the Kubernetes-based Rancher platform that SUSE acquired late last year.
Sarah Whitlock, global head of SUSE and Rancher Community, says the goal is to reduce the amount of time required to train an IT practitioner to come up to speed on the set of emerging IT technologies that, while admittedly being more complex, play a critical role in enabling organizations to become more agile.
Unfortunately, traditional universities have not been able to provide the training those practitioners require, which Whitlock says is why SUSE is investing in this latest education initiative. The Cloud Native Application Architecture Nanodegree program is also more focused on providing training that reflects real-world IT challenges, notes Whitlock.
In the absence of expertise required to run these platforms, many IT organizations have been hesitant to deploy platforms such as Kubernetes in a production environment. In effect, the proverbial chicken-and-egg issue emerges; that results in IT organizations continuing to rely on legacy platforms they already know how to manage instead of moving faster to embrace next-generation applications based on microservices, Whitlock adds.
The paradox, of course, is that most IT organizations need cloud-native platforms and skills to simultaneously drive multiple digital business transformation initiatives that have been either launched or accelerated in the wake of the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, that lack of cloud-native skills could potentially represent an existential threat to the business.
Of course, getting any type of IT training has been a challenge; many IT professionals, to help combat the spread of the pandemic, cannot travel to a conference or attend in-person training. Even when the COVID-19 pandemic eventually subsides, IT professionals will almost certainly rely on training classes and tutorials they can access online.
At the same time, the number of individuals that can access online training across a wide range of geographies will continue to grow. In effect, online training increases the overall size of the IT talent pool at a time when more organizations are not requiring IT professionals to report to a specific physical location.
As is the case with any emerging technology, the cloud-native skills gap that exists today may only be a temporary phenomenon. However, as long as it lasts, IT professionals that do have these skills will be able to command a salary premium that would otherwise not be available.
