Over the past several years, the ONUG Community has been keenly focused on IT organization transformation. We know that most digital transformation projects’ success or failure are directly correlated to IT skills, culture and organizational design. We have been keenly aware that many CEOs and their boards have shelved digital projects, thanks to the lack of confidence expressed by their CIOs that their IT organizations are not prepared. There is a massive industry skills gap in IT organizations to deliver good digital outcomes. Skills and culture are at the core of a company’s ability to enter into the digital economy. The ONUG Board recognized the growing skill gap back in 2014 and is addressing it with a range of programs that span from awareness, academic collaboration to ONUG Academy, where IT professionals and engineers can gain the skills needed to succeed in today’s hybrid/multi-cloud digital era.
As demand for IT professionals with vendor certification training wanes, demand for those equipped with the skills to stitch software building blocks together via APIs, service meshes, etc., are on the rise. Salary differences are growing between IT professionals with certification-based training and those with programming skills. Case in point: a network engineer with CCIE credentials makes an average of $73,000 per year while a cloud engineer makes an average of $95,000. Enterprise cloud architects, some of which are on the ONUG Board, make well over $350,000 per year.
To close the skills gap and elevate the ONUG Community into higher paying growth career paths, the ONUG Board created ONUG Academy. At ONUG Academy, a steering committee reviews courses and tutorials that they view are marketable from a Global 2000 hiring manager. ONUG invites academics, vendors and independents to teach at ONUG Academy, which occurs during ONUG Conferences.
ONUG has partnered with NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to drive software-managed infrastructure innovation with new lab resources. Also ONUG and NYU Stern School of Business have developed a graduate program to develop skills needed to be full-stack engineers.
At ONUG Spring, on May 7th and 8th at the Dallas CityPlace Conference Center, the ONUG Board is proud to offer a series of tutorials focused on training engineers to build infrastructure and applications in a hybrid/multi-cloud environment. To meet that end, Microsoft and Mist/Verizon have submitted courses that were approved for education and training at ONUG Academy.
Courses include:
ADVANCED NETWORKING FOR APPLICATIONS IN AZURE
In this workshop, you will learn about the networking services that Azure offers to secure your applications and provide them hybrid connectivity. We will share best practices and recommendations plus provide you hands-on experience setting up these services. Learn more here.
RUNNING KUBERNETES IN AZURE – NETWORKING VIEW
This workshop will focus on networking for applications running in a Kubernetes cluster in Azure. You will learn about the fundamental networking stack that powers containers and learn to use Azure’s network security and hybrid connectivity solutions to secure your containerized applications. We will provide you hands-on experience using the AKS service and setting up these networking capabilities. Learn more here.
The industry’s first certification course on “AI for IT.” In this one-day session, sponsored by Mist and Verizon, we will provide all the fundamentals needed to bring automation to IT with a focus on Wi-Fi, and hands-on experience setting up and operating a live Wireless LAN (WLAN) environment from a site level right to the mobile user level. Learn more here.
The ONUG Board is proud that attending ONUG Academy has changed people’s careers. According to Andy Clough, Desktop Application Support and Development Associate at Comfort Windows, “During my interview process, when the hiring manager saw that I attended ONUG Academy they were impressed. It helped me stand out with the skills needed to secure this new career in IT.”
Get educated with certificates of completion at ONUG Academy during ONUG Spring in Dallas on May 7th and 8th with tutorials by Microsoft and Mist/Verizon approved by the ONUG Academy Steering Committee of hiring managers.