The IT Pro Podcast: Everyone needs Kubernetes certs

published 10 December 2021

Container technology has gone from a niche, experimental application and infrastructure tool to a cornerstone of modern IT transformation - but its explosion in popularity has resulted in a corresponding demand for skilled professionals to manage these deployments. Kubernetes certifications are particularly sought after, and holding one is almost a licence to print money for IT professionals.

With the market for Kubernetes skills hotter than ever before, we’re joined this week by OpenUK CEO Amanda Brock to discuss why it’s become so popular, what this says about IT transformation in the UK, and how organisations can make sure they don’t fall into the Kubernetes skills gap.

Highlights

“Everybody is looking at Kubernetes, but they're not looking at it in isolation. What it's done is opened a floodgate in many ways for those who might not understand that they're using open. And the fact that they bring it into organisations, or they're using it via third parties, has opened up the opportunity for more tolerance, acceptance and understanding of open source generally, I think, so I don't think that you can say ‘everybody's using Kubernetes, nobody's using other open source’, I think what you're seeing is people are acknowledging and understanding their use of Kubernetes. And that's allowing their internal processes, their policies, their governance, to improve to facilitate the adoption of other open source.”

“With Kubernetes certification, there's a lot of structuring around it, and it's quite different. And I think there's that difference that's making it so popular alongside the scale of adoption. And what I mean by that is that the certification isn't your usual multiple plot choice test. You can't just tick box A the whole way through and find that you've passed. You actually have to answer.”

“I think that we can all accept that there are skills gaps. I was on a podcast a few months ago with OVH, ATOS; all of them were looking to recruit in the UK, with these skills. Now, I think the skills gap, we just have to accept is there. Obviously it's great to train people. And it would be ideal to bring people in with those skills. But there's a shortage. So you're balancing those two. And I think that we will have to retrain people, or encourage people to train in this space. I suspect that that's where the work that's been done in the last few years will really come into its own with CNCF, the Cloud Native Foundation, which has got this whole ecosystem around Kubernetes. So it doesn't just offer Kubernetes training. It offers training in associated products as well.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

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