The city of South Bend, Indiana has announced they are working with Google Cloud to connect 500 local job seekers with no-cost access to Google Cloud Skills Boost through Upskill SB. This initiative will train, upskill, and certify residents in cloud computing skills to create pathways to technical jobs.

As companies, nonprofits, and governments increasingly leverage cloud computing technology to strengthen their organizations, skilled cloud talent is in high demand both nationally, in Indiana, and in South Bend. According to Lightcast, there were 27,180 unique cloud roles open in the U.S. as of October 2022. Cloud skills are the most in-demand skill set by IT departments: more than one-third of tech learners said professionals with cloud skills are the most challenging to find.

“This partnership with Google Cloud will help residents get on a no-cost path to a cloud computing career at a time when the field is rapidly growing,” said Caleb Bauer, Executive Director of Community Investment for the City of South Bend. “This will help residents prepare to take the next step in their career with Google Cloud Skills Boost and will pave the way to build in-demand skills.”

Google Cloud Skills Boost is the destination for all Google Cloud learning and training opportunities. Local colleges and universities are also able to offer free access to Google Cloud Skills Boost for students through  the Google Cloud Higher Education program. Students can request access to free online labs, quests, and courses. Faculty can take advantage of free Google Cloud Computing Foundations curriculum and coach their students to prepare for Google Cloud certifications.

“Google is proud to offer no-cost access to Google Cloud Skills Boost for jobseekers in South Bend,” said Alice Kamens, Workforce Development lead at Google Cloud. “Through this partnership, we’re advancing our work to ensure everyone has access to the technical training needed to pursue cloud computing careers.”

Those interested in learning more about the program or applying for Upskill SB should visit the Google Cloud page on Upskill SB. Scholarship recipients need access to a computer, hand-held device or smartphone and the internet.

Enterprises want to embrace the pace of innovation and an operational business model of the modern-day cloud, but they don’t want to disrupt their existing IT landscape or upgrade all their legacy applications. This presents a conundrum, as most legacy applications were not designed to run in the cloud, and migrating them can be challenging, risky and cost-prohibitive. 

The complexity, cost and risk of cloud migration often stand in the way of a successful digital transformation. At Google Cloud, we work to meet you where you are and help you craft a migration strategy that lets you run what you want, where you want, how you want. This is why we’re excited to introduce Bare Metal Solution: to jumpstart the migration of applications that have been holding back your cloud adoption. 

Bare Metal Solution consists of all the infrastructure you need to run your specialized workload such as Oracle Database close to Google Cloud. This infrastructure is connected with a dedicated, low-latency and highly resilient interconnect, and connects to all native Google Cloud services. Bare Metal Solution uses OEM hardware that is certified to run multiple enterprise applications, most of which can be migrated to this infrastructure with little or no change, minimizing the risk of migration while simultaneously increasing its velocity.

Bare Metal Solution also comes with automation tools to help you onboard your environment quickly—provisioning your applications, relational databases, configuring popular operating systems and setting up services such as backups and monitoring. The management interface will be familiar to your existing IT teams or systems integrator, allowing you to leverage your investments in existing tools, processes and personnel.

In addition to providing state-of-the-art infrastructure and integrated low-latency access to Google Cloud, Bare Metal Solution also provides the following:

• Completely managed hardware infrastructure: End-to-end infrastructure management such as compute, storage and networking, as well as fully managed and monitored environments such as power, cooling and facilities.
• Google Cloud support and billing: A seamless support experience with support for infrastructure, including defined SLAs for initial response. 24X7 coverage for all Priority 1 and 2 issues. Unified billing across Google Cloud and Bare Metal Solution. 
• Service Level Agreements: Defined enterprise-grade SLA for hardware uptime and interconnect availability.

As an integral part of Google Cloud, Bare Metal Solution lets you off-load provisioning, managing and monitoring of your infrastructure to Google, so you can focus on your own data center modernization. 

The nitty gritty 

Many of the workloads that run on Bare Metal Solution have demanding CPU and I/O requirements. Bare Metal Solution provides a cost-effective and scalable architecture based on state-of-the-art x86 servers and high-performance, resilient storage. The servers are offered in several fixed configurations that support most mainstream enterprise operating systems:

• Dual-socket x86 systems
  • 16 core with 384 GB DRAM
  • 24 core with 768 GB DRAM
  • 56 core with 1536 GB DRAM
• Quad-socket x86 systems
  • 56 core with 1536 GB DRAM 
  • 112 core with 3072 GB DRAM

Bare Metal Solution servers can be used for standalone applications, or configured with application native or database native clustering technologies for high availability. Storage is offered in 1TB volume increments of either hybrid or all-flash disk. For applications that require custom compute shapes or special-purpose hardware, we also offer bespoke hardware configurations. 

Bare Metal Solution uses OEM hardware that is certified for many ISV software applications as well as custom built applications, including those built on Oracle Database. These hardware configurations are offered as a subscription, billed monthly with a preferred term length of 36 months. There are no data ingress and egress charges between Bare Metal Solution and Google Cloud in the same region; customers are responsible for provisioning adequate bandwidth for their business needs.

Legacy apps are no barrier to cloud

Google Cloud is the preferred destination for organizations building cloud-native applications as well as migrating existing on-premises applications, bringing reliable infrastructure, leading data analytics capabilities, and a culture of innovation to your IT environment. Whether you’re looking to build new applications in the cloud or to overhaul your infrastructure, we’re here to help you reach your digital transformation goals. And now, with Bare Metal Solution, we’re excited to extend the power of Google Cloud to specialized, legacy workloads. To learn more please visit our website.

Start your 2022 New Year’s resolutions by learning at no cost how to use Google Cloud with the following training opportunities:

30 day access to Google Cloud Skills Boost 

Register by January 31, 2022 and claim 30 days free access to Google Cloud Skills Boost to complete the Getting Started with Google Cloud learning path. 

Google Cloud Skills Boost is the definitive destination for skills development where you can personalize learning paths, track progress, and validate your newly-earned expertise with skill badges. 

The Getting Started with Google Cloud learning path will give you the opportunity to earn three skill badges after you complete hands-on labs and courses designed for aspiring cloud engineers and architects. It covers the fundamentals of Google Cloud including core infrastructure, big data and ML, writing gcloud commands, using Cloud Shell, deploying virtual machines, and running containerized applications on GKE.

Cloud OnBoard: half day training on getting started with Google Cloud fundamentals

Attend the Getting Started Cloud OnBoard on January 20 for a comprehensive Google Cloud orientation. Google Cloud experts will show you how to execute your compute, available storage options, how to secure your data, and available Google Cloud managed services. 

Cloud Study Jam: expert-guided hands-on lab

Google Cloud experts will walk you through a hands-on lab included in Google Cloud Skill Boost’s Getting Started with Google Cloud learning path when you join our Cloud Study Jam on January 27. Google Cloud experts will also answer questions live via chat during this event.