Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest public-cloud company, has created enormous demand for AWS expertise at the growing number companies that use cloud computing to run their businesses. Now it wants to work the supply side, helping provide workers trained to satisfy the demand.
AWS today launched re:Start, a program intended to train and find jobs for 1,000 UK young adults, military veterans, reservists and their spouses. The service was announced at an event in London, and enrollment is set to begin March 27.
The idea behind re:Start, AWS says on its dedicated website, is to teach residents from military or disadvantaged backgrounds — even those with no technical background — to design and develop AWS applications and set up AWS environments, while providing mentoring, teaching “soft” work skills, and assisting in resume writing and nailing down a job.
“We made a significant investment on behalf of our customers with the launch of a new infrastructure region in the UK, and today . . . we are deepening that commitment . . . helping to provide an ‘on ramp’ for the UK workforce into highly skilled digital roles,” said Gavin Jackson, AWS’s UK managing director, in a release.
The BBC has reported that the UK will need another 745,000 workers with digital skills this year. Karen Bradley, the UK’s secretary of state for culture, media, and sport said in the release that “increasing digital skills in the UK is a major priority for the Government.” She noted that re:Start brings together “employers from different sectors and provides the foundation on which they can continue to train and grow the UK’s digital workforce.”
The five-week program is open to UK residents between 16 and 25 not already in education or training and working less than 16 hours a week. AWS is working with the national Ministry of Defense, the Prince’s Trust charity, and UK-based consultancy QA Consulting, as well as its own network of partners, which are mostly consultants and independent software vendors.
The same site that explains the program offers a link to employers seeking trained AWS junior network engineers, junior IT support technicians, junior support analysts, and helpdesk support staff. QA Consulting, which is heading the program’s effort to recruit military personnel, could even employ program graduates itself, the site says.
AWS did not disclose whether the program will expand to other locations, but that would likely happen if there is sufficient demand.
AWS just one month ago opened its first UK region, in London. Brexit may be strengthening the market for cloud computing in UK, driving UK-based companies to seek local storage for their data and to cut their costs by minimizing expensive hardware investments, Fortune has speculated.
Microsoft, with second-place public-cloud service Azure, provides some online training through its Lynda.com educational website, part of LinkedIn. And, as TechCrunch noted, Microsoft can then offer job placements through its acquisition of LinkedIn.
