Dive Brief:

• Google announced Tuesday the acquisition of Qwiklabs, a company founded in 2012 focused on educating IT professionals how to effectively use the cloud, according to a Google blog. Financial details of the deal were disclosed.

• Google says the move will allow it to help customers get the most out of their cloud investments.

• "With Qwiklabs, we’re closing the IP skills gap in the cloud," wrote Jason Martin, director of professional services for Google Cloud. "We’re focused on offering the most comprehensive, efficient, and fun way to train and onboard people across all our products on Google Cloud, including Google Cloud Platform and G Suite."

Dive Insight:

Intense competition in the cloud space means companies are looking to differentiate themselves any way they can. Google likely sees Qwiklabs’ proven training method as a way to entice more companies to move to the cloud. And the technology isn't always user friendly. Working in a new hosting environment can take a large investment of time to ensure companies get what they need from the cloud. 

Martin said more than half a million users have "collectively spent over 5 million hours learning how to successfully deploy and manage multiple cloud technologies through the Qwiklabs platform."

Qwiklabs previously focused on teaching the skills required for using the Amazon Web Services cloud. Today, AWS still uses Qwiklabs to train developers on its platform, though the relationship could change now that Google has purchased the company.