Cloudera, the global provider of the fastest, easiest, and most secure data management and analytics platform built on the latest open source technologies announced an updated lineup of training courses and performance-based certification exams for data analysts, database administrators, and developers.

The expanded training offerings directly address the skills gap around the industry’s most in-demand solutions, such as Apache Impala (incubating), Apache Spark, Apache Kudu, Apache Kafka and Apache Hive. Cloudera’s dynamic training curriculum ensures data professionals are set for success in real world situations.

According to Dice, the most in-demand technology skills are big data, Spark and Hive. Although the need for these skills has increased in the past few years, employers are still challenged to find qualified candidates.

The Taneja Group saw similar findings in a global survey sponsored by Cloudera of nearly 7,000 technical and managerial-level professionals working in big data. The survey found that nearly half of the respondents see the big data skills gap as the most significant challenge to deploying Spark, and one-third named complexity in learning Spark as a barrier to adoption.

Cloudera is directly addressing these concerns and offering more foundational courses along with opportunities for hands-on learning through Cloudera University, which has trained over 45,000 people and certified more than 10,000 individuals to date.

“Cloudera University has established itself as a valuable resource for preparing data professionals across every industry. We’ve seen throughout the years that organizations which invest in training up front drive deeper results from their big data initiatives and move more quickly from proof of concept into full production environments,” said Mark Morrissey, senior director, Education Programs at Cloudera.

“The skills gap continues to be the biggest hurdle in our industry, so we’ve made it our mission to overcome this challenge by offering the world’s most comprehensive training curriculum, and performance-based certifications, for the Hadoop ecosystem.”

Employers who are tasked to build a highly skilled workforce to implement new digital strategies already expect certifications in the latest technologies. Cloudera supports this movement by providing the education and certification needed to push forward innovations in big data and open source initiatives.

Since its founding, Cloudera has been dedicated to expanding professionals’ skillsets to reflect the biggest demands in the tech industry. With the addition of hands-on, performance-based certifications focusing on administrators, developers and data analysts, that replicate real world scenarios in a big data environment, Cloudera continues to support organisations and individuals who wish to maximize their abilities to gain insights from their data.

Read more HR news & articles on HR in Asia