Message from the CEO, Stefano Bellasio
Five years ago, Giacomo Marinangeli (CTO and Co-founder, Cloud Academy), Simone Brunozzi (Co-founder and board member, Cloud Academy), Anthony Russell (Co-founder, Cloud Academy) and I set out to solve what we saw as a building problem for companies of all sizes around the world: How to take advantage of cloud computing and keep people up to date on these quickly changing technologies. Back then, we knew the cloud was going to be increasingly important as a way for companies to grow bigger faster, serve more people, and deliver applications to more and more devices as they come online.
Now, the cloud has become the dominant computing platform globally, with new standards and technology developing by the day. Not since the web itself has there been such a disruptive computing movement. We started Cloud Academy to keep people ahead of cloud computing’s evolution by being the competitive differentiator between thriving in business, and being overtaken by more nimble enterprises.
We built Cloud Academy thinking about a unique platform able to combine software and great training content.
In the early days, we understood that videos were not enough and we changed how people learn new things, building a set of technologies like Hands-on Labs and Skills Assessment to really give our students an interactive experience. The early days of Cloud Academy were the ones where our library had content for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and a few more technologies. But today, we cover a variety of topics and areas that are still under the big umbrella of cloud — from DevOps to Security and Machine Learning. In the last year, our growth brought us to start adding content related to software development, IoT, and AI. This is how big cloud became and how we have been listening to our customers to add more and more to our library.
The demand we serve in the U.S. alone is enormous: Companies spend nearly $200 billion on keeping their employees up-to-date — there is tremendous opportunity here and we’re just scratching the surface of it. That’s why today, I’m excited to announce that Cloud Academy joins forces with QA, the UK’s largest B2B skills provider, to solve this massive skills gap problem. Together, we offer a blended learning approach that combines our organizations’ offerings and deliver the latest technology with modern curriculum design for a skills transfer experience that really sticks.
The pairing of QA with Cloud Academy creates the world’s leading digitally-enabled learning solutions provider.
We now offer content that none of our competitors can match, with all the benefits of face-to-face learning and a genuinely intuitive and immersive digital experience. Cloud Academy customers now have access to QA’s massive catalog of more than 500 certification courses and 1500 instructor-led courses, which we’ll blend with Cloud Academy’s best-in-class digital platform.
We are doing this to create a set of new products and experiences that are completely unique for our market and — as it’s in our culture — we are doing that to help build innovative technology.
What does this mean for Cloud Academy going forward?
Just great things: We’ll continue to operate under the Cloud Academy name, and Giacomo and I will keep leading Cloud Academy. Only now we’ll have more resources and services with which to tackle this incredible opportunity. We can now provide a holistic learning experience that combines face-to-face and digital skills for a new global customer base.
We’re excited for our next phase of growth and to be a part of the QA family! Let’s embrace this opportunity to be the world’s leading digital and corporate skills learning resource.
Thank you to our Customers and Investors. Your trust made this possible and I will be forever grateful for that.
My biggest “thank you” goes to my people at Cloud Academy: This is your achievement and your success, and you deserve all of it!
Stefano Bellasio
CEO and Co-founder, Cloud Academy Inc.
Pictured from left to right: Stefano Bellasio, Lisa Harrington (Managing Director, QA), and Giacomo Marinangeli
To learn more about Cloud Academy and QA, go to qa.com/cloudacademy.
