Google, Coursera team up to offer cloud training courses

Google is collaborating with the online education company Coursera to train more workers for the growing cloud computing industry.

The companies on Friday announced the launch of a series of on-demand Google Cloud Platform training courses, developed and taught by “Google experts,” according to Louise Byrne, head of Cloud Training Delivery for Google Cloud.

The courses, available for a range of skill levels from beginner to advanced, will tackle topics including cloud fundamentals, operations, security, data analytics and machine learning. On Friday Coursera launched the first course in the Data Engineering on Google Cloud Specialization — “Big Data and Machine Learning.”

The shortage of workers with cloud skills has been a problem for businesses: In November, Cloud Foundry published its Global Perception Study, which found that all of the nearly 900 executives surveyed are having trouble finding IT employees who understand the cloud. Similarly, a report from RightScale showing that a lack of resources and expertise was the biggest cloud challenge for companies in 2016.

With 24 million users on Coursera, the educational platform gives Google a way to reach a large pool of potential talent. Google has taken other steps to help cultivate a workforce with cloud skills — in November, the company announced it acquired Qwiklabs, a startup that offers lab-learning environments for cloud platforms and infrastructure software vendors.