UPDATED 22:47 EST / DECEMBER 10 2020

CLOUD

New Amazon program aims to train 29M people in cloud computing by 2025

Amazon.com Inc. today announced a new program designed to train 29 million people to work in cloud computing by 2025.

The idea behind the program is to reskill people to be able to find jobs in the information age in which cloud computing, complete with online commerce dominates as millions have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon’s latest imitative is geared toward those who aren’t already employed at the company. As of July Amazon employed 876,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada and was planning to add 133,000 before the end of the year. The company itself employs 1.3 million people globally, making it the second-largest employer in the U.S. behind Walmart Inc.

The program includes free training support for those looking to prepare for entry-level support positions and for existing engineers looking to broader their enterprise skills in areas such as machine learning or cybersecurity.

“We’ve been working on at Amazon Web Services to make sure we’re looking for new ways to train and certify individuals around the world with expanded job skills,” Teresa Carlson, vice president, Worldwide Public Sector and Industries at Amazon Web Services Inc., said during a presentation today at the cloud giant’s re:Invent virtual conference that began last week and runs through next week. “I pushed the idea that they should be working backwards from the job skills that are needed. “In the U.S. alone, Accenture estimates 33 million American reskilled workers could transition into new jobs.”

The Amazon training programs can be taken remotely and include a variety of content. The push is said to help millions of workers potentially navigate career changes without incurring steep debt.

Amazon’s commitment to training workers to have the skills to work in cloud computing comes as Amazon, still most famous for its e-commerce side in the U.S., gets most of its profit from its cloud computing services. AWS accounted for $11.6 billion in sales in Amazon’s third-quarter earnings. Unlike its e-commerce arm wherein Amazon takes a cut of sales, the AWS business, which relies on Amazon’s global data centers, has a far larger return for the company.

John Furrier and Lisa Martin, hosts of SiliconANGLE’s video studio theCUBE, discussed Carlson’s presentation where she discussed jobs issues among other things:

Photo: mtacc/Flickr

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