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TIP teamed with Rakuten Symphony to develop three new Telco Cloud training courses
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TIP is aiming to help tackle the skills gap through TIP Academy
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It is planning to make the courses more broadly available through partnerships
Picture this: it’s a training montage out of your favorite fight movie. Only instead of the Karate Kid, it’s telecom technicians. And instead of learning martial arts to defeat their nemesis, they’re beefing up their cloud knowledge to overcome a skills gap that threatens their very existence. That’s what Rakuten Symphony and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) are aiming for. Kind of.
The pair announced they collaborated on the development of a trio of new Telco Cloud training courses – ‘What is Cloud Native?’, ‘Cloud Native Challenges’ and ‘Kubernetes Introduction’ – which will be offered through TIP Academy starting next month to get learners up to speed on cloud basics.
Launched in 2022, TIP Academy already has more than 1,500 learners and has issued more than 800 training certificates.
A TIP representative told Silverlinings the new classes are aimed at “cloud implementation technology strategists, and operational teams who are looking at automation approaches using the cloud and are establishing or trying to redevelop their cloud strategy.” The representative added they’re also perfect for operator engineers “who are looking for public and hybrid cloud models to evaluate the best architectural options to drive zero automation strategy for OSS/BSS integration.”
So, how does Rakuten Symphony fit in?
Well, the TIP representative said that Rakuten Symphony took their learnings from Rakuten Mobile and formed internal teams to examine what cloud-native development looks like for operators. They then provided executives to develop the courses based on that information.
We’ve written about the cloud skills gap before, highlighting how nearly half of enterprises flagged a lack of in-house talent as a major problem in deploying cloud technology and how upskilling should be a priority.
Cloud specifics aside, the telecom industry has its own talent shortage it’s grappling with. And the employees they do have aren’t exactly optimistic about their future.
A recent PwC survey found that 46% of telecom employees don’t think their company will be around in 10 years while nearly a third said they plan to change jobs in the next 12 months.
PwC flagged a lack of software and cloud skills as a critical challenge for telecoms.
“Badly needed software talent is hard to find and attract. As a result, many organizations lack the institutional capabilities to unlock new growth, modernize the back-office and legacy systems, and work at the pace of new technologies,” the firm wrote.
On the cloud front, hyperscalers have tried to address the skills problem by offering various training and certification programs. TIP’s offering is icing on that cake, with a much-needed focus on applying those skills in a telco environment.
Though the classes will initially be offered through TIP Academy, the representative said TIP does have plans to syndicate its content via a combination of directly offering training to telecom operators and service integrators and indirectly providing them to telecom training businesses.
So stay tuned for more on that!