Rancher Labs, creators of the most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform, today announced the launch of Rancher Academy. Rapid enterprise adoption of containers and Rancher's emergence as a leader in enterprise Kubernetes management have created strong demand for a professional, Rancher-led certification program. The announcement not only addresses this need, but further cements Rancher's commitment to education and to enabling the complete democratization of Kubernetes.

Unprecedented Demand for Kubernetes Skills

No matter the geography, enterprises are increasingly embracing cloud-native solutions that include agile, time- and cost-saving Kubernetes strategies. However, the high degree of infrastructure automation and operations skills needed to meet customer demand fall short. The recently released Dice Tech Job Report for 2020 highlights an 82% increase in job demand for individuals with Kubernetes skills over the past year alone. Dice predicts that the demand for Kubernetes skills will enjoy a projected growth rate of more than 67% over the next ten years. Additionally, over just the past year, Rancher has experienced a 250% increase in its Rodeo and Master Class registrations, highlighting practitioners' desire to build competencies in Kubernetes concepts/architectures and hands-on Rancher skills.

Meeting this head-on, Rancher is launching Rancher Academy, a professional, no-cost, zero obligation certification program centered on empowering commercial customers and the open source community to be successful with Kubernetes and Rancher.

"This Rancher certification is designed to help Kubernetes practitioners demonstrate their knowledge and competence with Kubernetes and Rancher," said Adrian Goins, Director of Community and Evangelism, Rancher Labs. "Not only do we want all members of our community to have the most relevant and up-to-date skills on the industry's most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform. But we also want to empower them to be at the forefront of the cloud-native way of doing business, which is agile, open source oriented and maniacally focused on fast access to innovation."

Best-Practice Skills to Complete Day-to-Day Tasks

The Certified Rancher Operator: Level 1 certification is the first level available via Rancher Academy, with new classes scheduled to be announced later this year. It is a comprehensive and intensive self-paced five-week course, covering everything you need to know about how to deploy and manage Rancher, as well as use the platform to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters from any provider.

Built using educational best practices, the course is exceptionally detailed and includes a mix of passive and active learning, with increasing detail and difficulty over the five weeks. Components of the learning experience include:

• Video introductions
• Theory work
• Demonstrations
• Hands-on labs
• Quizzes, and
• A final exam

Once completed, a certified individual will have in-depth knowledge and the confidence to best deploy, use and manage Kubernetes with Rancher.

Ongoing Commitment to Open Source Education

Building upon Rancher's commitment to supporting the open source community, Rancher Academy is a logical extension of the company's current education courses and reflects its desire to empower organizations to realize the full potential of Kubernetes. Open source and commercial practitioners who may have already taken advantage of Rancher Rodeos, Master Classes and/or introductory product training can now formalize and document their skills and competencies with a comprehensive, professional, enterprise certification.

The training is ideal for open source practitioners, partners supporting their customers and end-user customers looking to maximize their investment in Kubernetes, as well as any individual looking to increase their Rancher and Kubernetes competency in order to advance their careers.

You can access the Rancher Academy, here.