In continued enterprise push, Google acquires cloud training startup Qwiklabs

Google today announced in a blog post that it has acquired Qwiklabs, the startup aimed at educating IT professionals on the benefits of using the cloud. The company was founded in 2012 and Google says that Qwiklabs will remain available following the acquisition.

It’s unclear at this point how much Google paid for Qwiklabs, but the company is hopeful that the acquisition will close the skills gap in the cloud. Google plans to put the service to use in educating businesses and helping them get the most of the cloud and the money they invest into cloud-based services.

In a blog post, Google Cloud’s director of professional services, Jason Martin, explained that the Qwiklabs platform has helped over half a million users learn how to “deploy and manage” cloud platforms.

With Qwiklabs, we’re closing the IP skills gap in the cloud. 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. 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.

We want to help businesses get the most out of their cloud investment and, with Qwiklabs, we’ll give users a place to learn and expand their cloud skills to deliver more innovation, more features and more efficiency for their customers.

Google has been beefing up its cloud services in a number of way. Over the summer, the company acquired Anvato to help improve tis cloud solutions for scalable video streaming. Perhaps more related to the Qwiklabs acquisition, however, is Google’s purchased of training service Synergyse, which was actually founded by ex-Google employees.

As of right now, Qwiklabs will remain operational and continue to be a tool available for businesses looking to learn more about the cloud.