Dive Brief:

• Coursera is partnering with Google to offer Google Cloud Platform training courses to help broaden the number of skilled professionals who can use the internet giant's cloud platform technology, the company announced Friday. 

• The first class in the new Data Engineering on Google Cloud Specialization, Big Data and Machine Learning, is now available, and the company said more courses in infrastructure, machine learning, analytics and application development will launch soon.

• The new courses are taught by Google experts and include topics like cloud fundamentals, operations, security, data analytics and machine learning, according to Coursera. 

Dive Insight:

Demand for cloud computing experts is enormous, but a shortage of skilled professionals can prevent companies from taking full advantage of cloud solutions.

Concern among IT leaders about the lack of resources and expertise in cloud grew from 27% in 2015 to 32% in 2016, supplanting security as the biggest worry, according to a cloud computing survey by RightScale. "As more organizations are placing more workloads in the cloud, the need for expertise has grown. Additional training of IT and development staff will be critical to helping address this challenge," according to the report.

This is not Google’s first investment in cloud training. Last November, Google announced the acquisition of Qwiklabs, a company focused on educating IT professionals on how to effectively use the cloud. For Google, training could be a nice differentiator that could help increase its appeal among companies preparing to move to cloud.