Nutanix and Udacity to offer Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree Program

Nutanix announced a partnership with Udacity, the online learning platform, resulting in a new Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program. This program will enhance learning opportunities in the emerging cloud technologies market that are essential for organizations to uplevel their IT infrastructure. As part of the collaboration, Nutanix will also sponsor 5,000 scholarships to help IT professionals advance their knowledge with this initiative.

As more services move to the cloud, IT teams require the knowledge and expertise it takes to properly manage these infrastructures that increasingly stretch across on-premises and public cloud in a hybrid model. Although hybrid cloud technology continues to grow and evolve, educational opportunities in this field remain at a standstill. In Nutanix’s recent Enterprise Cloud Index survey, 85% of respondents said that hybrid cloud is the ideal operating model. However, 32% of respondents reported a lack of in-house hybrid cloud skills.

To fill this educational gap, Udacity and Nutanix have collaborated closely to develop a Nanodegree program that will advance the knowledge of seasoned IT professionals. To strengthen professional development in this space, the Nanodegree program will cover modern private cloud infrastructure and the design of hybrid application deployment. Ideal students are those managing traditional business applications, legacy infrastructure, or cloud-native applications on public cloud infrastructure.

“One of our primary goals at Nutanix is to ensure that cloud technology professionals continue to stay on the cusp of innovation in this developing field,” said Wendy M. Pfeiffer, CIO at Nutanix. “We are excited to have worked closely with Udacity to develop the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program, and now open access to thousands of leading cloud professionals through this scholarship program.”

To ensure all participants looking to increase their education within the cloud environment have an opportunity to do so, Udacity is opening applications to the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Scholarship program. For the first phase of the scholarship program, Udacity will select 5,000 applicants to participate in the Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals course. From those 5,000 students, 500 high-performing students will be awarded a full scholarship to the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program.

“At Udacity, we strive to empower professionals with the most demanded, forward-looking skills in their fields,” said Udacity CEO Gabe Dalporto. “We’re delighted to team up with Nutanix, a pioneer and leader in the cloud computing field, to create the new, cutting-edge Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program.”

The Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program will focus on four subject areas:

• Modern Private Cloud Infrastructure: Learn to configure and manage a hyper-converged infrastructure cluster, providing a scalable, distributed storage, network, and compute fabric for virtual machines and advanced services.
• Hybrid Cloud Application Design: Learn about the evolution of hybrid cloud workload management and design for multiple infrastructures.
• Automating Private Cloud: Create a scalable web application and life cycle operational model with governance to enable on-demand, self-service workloads on-prem with fiscal oversight and quotas.
• Designing Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: Learn public cloud concepts, manage hybrid workloads, and drive to global load balancing of workloads.