Pluralsight partners with Google Cloud to provide cloud skills learning

Pluralsight is making heavy investment in the cloud, extending its partnerships with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to help customers of its online training platform maintain and develop their cloud computing skills.

The latest partnership with Google Cloud was announced this week during Pluralisight's annual Live conference in Salt Lake City, and includes the launch of a new Skill IQ assessment for associate cloud engineers on the Google Cloud Platform.

The initiative, known as the Associate Cloud Engineer on GCP, is designed to measure skills in different technical areas such as application development, data services, Kubernetes and more specifically geared towards Google Cloud-specific services.

The tool aims to give technology leaders better visibility into the skillset of their team and build a development strategy to help close any existing skills gap.

Cloud skills are in hot demand as more organisations shift in that direction. Developer portal Stack Overflow reported surging demand for Amazon Web Services (AWS) skills across the UK and Ireland last year, with the popular platform jumping from 12th place to fifth in its skills rankings, gaining a 10.3 percent share of the skills tags found in Stack Overflow's jobs listings.

In fact, AWS skills are the fifth most popular on Pluralsight's platform, something Google Cloud will no doubt be aspiring towards.

“Our partnership with Pluralsight is interesting on many angles, but when we started to do this with Google Cloud I think there was a very deliberate plan, because there are so many online learning platforms out there,” Rochana Golani, director of learning and enablement at Google Cloud told Computerworld UK at Pluralsight Live.

“While our strategy has been about scale, it was also about really making sure that we’re meeting the needs of the customer, so we wanted to pick a partner that was able to make it easier for the enterprises to actually work with us,” she added.

With over 15 courses already live on Pluralsight, Google Cloud is just starting to provide customers with all the knowledge needed to master the right skills to work with its platform, which boasts over 375 labs, so there is still work to be done.

“Our commitment definitely is long term, we want to keep things refreshed and we want to provide more coverage for all of the various roles and skills out there,” Golani said.

Why Pluralsight?

Having worked with several online learning platforms already, such as Coursera, Google Cloud sought a different platform to extend its reach.

Pluralsight grabbed its attention as one of the few providers to offer learning solutions for emerging technology roles such as data and cloud engineers.

Aside from this, the two companies also share a number of joint customers already and the partnership provides them with the opportunity to learn quicker.

“I think in some ways, Pluralsight just allows us to get there faster because they already have all of the technology built-in and the access to the enterprise customers,” Golani said.

What next?

Pluralsight will continue working with Google Cloud to develop the assessment initiative, by ensuring that the entire Google Cloud course library is available on its platform.

The training specialist also announced this week that it is expanding its relationship with Microsoft Azure with the launch of five new role IQ's, tailored to Azure roles and Microsoft's official role-based certifications. These role IQ's include DevOps Engineer, AI Engineer and Data Scientist.

Similarly to the Google Cloud courses, all Azure IQ's will enable tech leaders to determine the role proficiency of each employee in their organisation, whilst providing them with the required skills to succeed in their roles.