Today, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced the Kubernetes Training Partner (KTP) program. The KTP is an extension of the Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) program that includes a special tier of providers who have deep experience creating and delivering cloud native training. Container Solutions are proud to be one of the six founding members of the KTP.
The Road to the KTP
Container Solutions’ focus has always been on the customer journey. What does a customer need to succeed? How can we de-risk their migration to the cloud whilst creating independence? How can we as an organisation transfer control to our clients? Early on, we realised that training was an essential part of the process of embedding cloud native technologies, capabilities and accompanying mindset.
The Container Solutions Migration Journey
For Container Solutions’ customers, training first comes up in the ‘Discover and Plan’ phase of the journey. However, it’s not until the ‘Prepare’ phase that the learning plan starts to fully form. It is during this phase that we identify the individual and organisational needs and align them with our training curriculum.
More recently, we have started to offer courses which prepare individuals for both the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exams, often building on these with our Secure Microservices course. For managers we offer an array of courses such as our Introduction to Cloud Native Strategy.
When there isn’t a course which matches the immediate need or the customer is looking for something a little different then we can develop a bespoke training course. As our training curriculum continues to grow, we find that more often than not we can meet the need with off the shelf products, which of course is much more cost effective.
Once Container Solutions’ customers hit the ‘Propel’ phase, the training begins at scale. We handle large scale training through our bootcamps, a licensing system whereby we train the customer’s internal trainers, or simply through long running arrangements that accompany the whole migration.
In the last three years, our trainings have been used as part of our wider process to help some of the world’s best companies migrate to the cloud and succeed with Kubernetes. We gained valuable experience during these three years and it was this experience that let us pass one of the CNCF’s strictest criteria for joining the KTP program:
Ability to demonstrate your training capabilities by meeting strict benchmarks for experience and quality, including the ability to provide references from students who have completed your training courses and from major organizations that have used your training services.
So, our journey to the KTP started for us with our customers’ journeys. Training therefore emerged as an essential part of our customer’s success, at which point it became a first class citizen at Container Solutions.
Stand Alone Training
The Container Solutions’ method for cloud migration is both mature and proven to work. Training is an essential part of that journey but it’s a part that exists in relation to the whole. During the strategy phase of the journey we identify what needs to happen and when. As we prepare the infrastructure we also identify the key knowledge bottlenecks. And finally, the training is less valuable unless it’s embedded into long running processes, such as the coaching and mentoring processes that Container Solutions help to build, that encourage continuous learning.
That all been said, the key to a smooth migration is shared understanding. This means that stand-alone trainings taken before the strategy works commences or during the ‘Prepare’ phase will still create value. We have therefore come to see training as a no-regret move for many organisations; training is a cost effective way to reduce risk and increase independence without disrupting operations. It was for these reasons that we started offering our courses to the public or to organisations as stand alone products / packages. Our public trainings are also one way in which we help to fulfil the CNCF’s mission to ‘drive the adoption of a new computing paradigm that is optimized for modern distributed systems environments capable of scaling to tens of thousands of self healing multi-tenant nodes’. This is, after all, our mission too.
What Next?
The starting points for many organisations and individuals are the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) programs. Container Solutions are authorised to deliver training courses for these programs, both of which lead to certification for the participants. If you are interested in learning more, please drop us an email, tweet us or call one of the offices. Container Solutions deliver trainings globally and has offices and training facilities in Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Zurich, Aarhus, Copenhagen and Montreal, from where we deliver trainings to both Canada and the United States.
