AWS partners with Centurion University to offer 600 courses

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, is in talks with Centurion University to offer several skill-based courses. The Odisha-based university offers nearly 120 skill courses with at least 45 domain specialisations. It is pertinent to mention that the varsity has been offering four skill-based courses of AWS for the last four years. Now the university is planning to implement all or most of the 600 courses that are available on the Skill Builder portal. 

Talking about the partnership, Prof. DN Rao - Vice President of Centurion University, told Zee Business that he was the one who gave the idea of developing most of the courses around AWS.

Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:

What exactly is this partnership?

Prof. DN Rao: "AWS is one of the biggest names in the world. So, they (AWS) have come to see how we are implementing these courses because they have never launched these courses at any university. I have told them Centurian University will help AWS to take it to various state governments. But before that, I would like to implement it at our university. And if successful, we will take it further," Rao said.

How exactly this partnership will work?

Prof. DN Rao: Once we start, there will be around 50-60 faculty members certified in AWS courses and wherever required AWS team will assist us be it in research, training or anything else. These courses will be available for students in the next two months.

How this partnership will help students of Centurion?

Prof. DN Rao: Oh, my God, it (AWS) is a universe. Right? I can get all my 2,000 kids placed in AWS. Amazon Web Services is like a world in itself. You can have startups in AWS, you can have jobs in AWS and so many other opportunities. Every industry out there wants a cloud professional because almost everything is on the cloud these days. Today, cloud computing costs are one of the largest in every company. So there is a huge demand for such professionals who can manage these things and bring down the cost. 

What is the biggest challenge? 

Prof. DN Rao: The biggest challenge in any technology adoption is to be able to convince both the students and faculty to adopt it. There are around 100 students who are part of the four AWS courses already available in the university and we have set the target of getting 1,000 students enrolled by next year for all around 600 courses that we are going to start.