Google Cloud introduces new certifications and training to address the cloud skills crisis
Rochana Golani
Google Cloud Learning Services Managing Director
As cloud technology becomes more mainstream, many of the traditional challenges to cloud initiatives are falling by the wayside. But there’s one challenge that continues to impact many enterprises. The increase in cloud adoption has resulted in a corresponding increase in the need for workers skilled in cloud technologies. Yet this workforce is not easy to come by. OpsRamp’s recent survey of 124 IT managers found that 94 percent say it’s at least "somewhat difficult” to find candidates with the right cloud technology skills—a situation which they call a "full-blown crisis.”
At Google Cloud, we understand that having the right skills can make or break your journey to the cloud. According to an Indeed survey “Google Cloud is the skill that's seeing the fastest-growing demand” with a 66.74% increase over the past year. So we’re doubling down on delivering the resources that develop cloud fluency throughout the workforce.
In 2019, we’re addressing the cloud skills crisis in three ways:
- Expanding our role-based certifications to help businesses identify qualified talent.
- Preparing millions of workers to thrive in a cloud-first world by offering a wide variety of learning options.
- Localizing our cloud learning and certification in Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese to make them accessible to more people.
Expanding our role-based certifications
As cloud adoption continues to grow, businesses increasingly need to redefine traditional IT job roles to reflect a broader mandate that bridges technology and business strategy. To help, we’ve developed a portfolio of certifications that addresses the most critical roles for success in the cloud.
Today, we’re announcing that we’re adding four new certifications to the Google Cloud Certified portfolio:
- Professional Cloud Developer (GA)
- Professional Cloud Network Engineer (Beta)
- Professional Cloud Security Engineer (Beta)
- G Suite certification (GA)
These four new certifications round out our certification portfolio (which already includes Professional Cloud Architect, Professional Data Engineer, and Associate Cloud Engineer). Collectively, our certifications support the core cloud job roles we believe every organization should have on their team. Over the past year, we’ve been paying close attention to what helps organizations successfully transition to the cloud and capitalize on their investments. What we learned is that it takes collaboration across teams, especially among the members who are designing and securing infrastructure, building applications, and connecting data—roles that are reflected in our certifications.
A key to a successful cloud transformation is developing skills throughout the organization. To this point, we have also included a G Suite certification to validate digital skills used in today’s cloud-first professional environments. Many of our customers have told us how migrating to G Suite has been key to unlocking a cloud culture of collaboration and innovation. By providing this new certification, we hope to address the digital skills gap and equip our customers with a benchmark for measuring their team’s readiness for meaningful cloud transformation.
Preparing millions of workers to thrive in a cloud-first world
According to Indeed, job listings mentioning “Google Cloud” as a desired skill have increased 1082% over the past three years. To help meet the demand, we are committed to training millions in 2019 and beyond.
We’ve been expanding our robust training portfolio to support Google Cloud skills that are in high demand. With more than 40 on-demand courses and nearly 300 hands-on labs, we’re providing the resources needed for workers to develop cloud expertise and stay up to date with Google Cloud technologies. Here are a few of the latest additions to our training catalogue:
- Security in Google Cloud Platform Specialization (new)
- Networking in Google Cloud Platform Specialization
- Preparing for Professional Cloud Architect Certification Exam
- Preparing for Professional Data Engineer Certification Exam
- Advanced Machine Learning with TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform Specialization
- Industrial IoT on Google Cloud Platform
- Building Conversational Experiences with Dialogflow
Making learning accessible to all
From the onset of the Google Cloud Learning program, we’ve been committed to delivering training that is affordable and accessible to all. It didn’t take long to realize that convenient and non-traditional learning environments were fast becoming the new norm, so we became one of the first public cloud providers to offer all of our courses on-demand. Furthering our commitment to accessibility, we localized our courses and certifications into five languages: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. We have big plans to continue expanding our offerings in these languages in 2019.
Here are some highlights of our top localized training and certifications
Today’s learners are tomorrow’s leaders
If you or your team is ready to go all in on cloud learning with us in 2019, we encourage you to make certification your goal. Starting in February, we will be hosting free weekly webinars to help you get ready for Google Cloud certification. Check our Cloud OnAir website periodically to see our upcoming webinars. In the meantime, start your learning today with one month free access to select on-demand training on Coursera through December 31, 2019 when you register.
If you’re joining us at Next ‘19 in San Francisco, you can continue preparing at one of many bootcamps or get Google Cloud Certified onsite. If you’re not joining us for Next ‘19, you can register to take a certification exam at a testing center near you.
When it comes to Google Cloud learning, we’re all in. Are you?
