How to Easily Get Very In-Demand OpenStack Cloud Skills

How in demand are cloud computing skills in the job market? Consider these notes from Forbes, based on a report from WANTED Analytics: "There are 3.9 million jobs in the U.S. affiliated with cloud computing today with 384,478 in IT alone. The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950 and the median salary for positions that pay over $100,000 a year is $116,950."

The report also notes that IBM, Oracle and Amazon have the greatest number of cloud computing positions open. We've noted before that people with OpenStack skills, in particular, are doing well in the job market. Here are some details on training and certification programs for OpenStack that can make a difference for job seekers.

 "OpenStack talent is a rarified discipline," Josh McKenty, who helped develop the platform, has told CRN, adding, "to be good with OpenStack, you need to be a systems engineer, a great programmer but also really comfortable working with hardware."  The good news is that there are more ways to sharpen OpenStack skills, and gain valuable certification.

The OpenStack Foundation launched a Training Marketplace designed to make it easier to discover training courses offered by providers in the OpenStack community.  “The goal of the Foundation is to eliminate barriers to OpenStack adoption, create more OpenStack experts and ensure that OpenStack has a positive impact on the careers of our community members,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, in a statement. “We want to grow the community, accelerate the availability of training programs worldwide and help close the OpenStack job gap."  

The Linux Foundation, Mirantis, Morphlabs, Piston, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE and SwiftStack are just some of the companies to have courses available in the OpenStack Foundation Training Marketplace.

Mirantis has steadily announced interesting training programs.  The company has also announced that hundreds of organizations around the world have turned to the Mirantis Training and Certification program for OpenStack to train and certify their IT staff as OpenStack cloud operators on multiple platforms.  

Meanwhile, Rackspace has an entire curriculum of courses built around OpenStack.  The company has been conducting on-demand e-learning training courses and offers a number of new classroom courses.

Silicon Angle has produced an extremely exhaustive roundup of online and offline resources for learning OpenStack skills. It includes discussion of OpenStack bootcamps from MorphLabs and Mirantis, Red Hat OpenStack training, Piston training, and more. 

The OpenStack Foundation has put some numbers on the expected growth for OpenStack-related jobs and added more about its Training Marketplace:

"OpenStack expertise continues to pay off, with OpenStack jobs consistently paying higher wages and employers doubling the number of job postings over the past year. The ecosystem has quickly responded to help developers and operators gain these valuable skills....Future demand for OpenStack skills is only expected to grow, with the BSA Global Cloud Scorecard predicting that 14 million cloud jobs will be created by 2015."

And, don't forget that you can obtain valuable certification for OpenStack skills from some of the organizations mentioned in this post. Red Hat, for example, has announced its Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Infrastructure-as-a-Service and expanded training in support of its OpenStack technology. You can find out more about it in this post.