Skill development has always been a must for anyone in an IT career, but this is especially true as cloud services mature and the components of cloud infrastructure trickle down into the rapidly evolving corporate data centre.

Whether you are looking to refresh existing skills on the latest technologies or branch out into a new specialty there are a host of invaluable resources available at no cost to you from some of the biggest vendors in the computing industry.

The result for IT pros is that vendors’ marketing budget could very easily be your ticket to advancement should the skills they teach become needed where you work now or at a different organisation.

In this case, the old adage, “You get what you pay for,” isn’t necessarily true. Many of the training libraries listed here alphabetically by company name are top notch, featuring videos, reference material and in some cases even full lab environments or free software tools.

"Many of these training libraries offer completion certificates or badges and some facilitate your path to recognised industry certifications by preparing you for proctored exams."

Some of content provided by the eight vendors listed here is fully free, but registration is required in most cases. In many cases additional training content may be available only to known customers or business partners, in which case you’ll likely need to work through your business rep to gain access. Many vendors offer premium memberships in the form of paid subscriptions or purchased training credits.

Here the focus is primarily on training libraries that are open to anyone, offering self-paced training at no cost.

AWS Training

AWS can provide a huge array of services and offers an equally impressive range of courses. The AWS training library is structured to support both beginners and seasoned veterans, for either technical pros or for less technical roles such as sales, management and planning.

Many of the courses are offered in languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese.

Course materials consist of text and video content with periodic knowledge checks to ensure you are retaining the material being covered. Playback speed of course videos can be adjusted to breeze through content you are already familiar with.

The training also offers AWS Cloud Quest, a cheesy but innovative training platform that operates like an open-world role-playing game. You can navigate it to complete tasks and solve business problems through puzzles, labs and quizzes.

AWS offers both free and premium training libraries. The free library contains over 500 courses, practice exams for certification exams and the Cloud Quest game. Premium users gain access to three exam-prep courses, over 100 lab environments, additional Cloud Quest roles, as well as access to a second role-playing game AWS Industry Quest for US$29 per month or US$299 a year.

Skills for All from Cisco

Cisco’s Skills for All offers a wealth of beginner and intermediate courses across broad courses like networking and cyber security. These courses are bundled into learning collections of up to 70 hours of training and there is even training for a career path in cyber security totalling 160 hours of coursework.

The courses are available primarily in English, but many are also available in Spanish and French and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Russian and German.

Skills for All courseware includes video-based training and interactive lessons designed to optimise learning and encourage engagement with the materials. Cisco offers downloadable resources including their network-configuration simulator tool, Packet Tracer and virtual machines preconfigured to facilitate hands-on lab work for some of the cyber security courses.

As you complete modules and courses in Skills for All you can unlock achievements and earn digital badges to use on your resume or social media.

Cisco doesn’t offer certifications directly through Skills for All, but its cyber security career path does align with the test objectives for the IT Specialist – cyber security certification offered through Certiport and the Skills for All Python Essentials 1 and 2 courses prepare you for the Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer (PCEP) and Certified Associate in Python Programming (PCAP) certs from the Python Institute.

Fortinet Training Institute

Fortinet Training Institute offers free access to their Network Security Expert (NSE) courses Levels 1-8, the first three of which allow you to earn associate-level certifications within the course. Each of the NSE courses builds on existing knowledge by providing a progressively advanced overview of security threats and protection measures.

Fortinet also offers self-paced training courses on a broad range of its security products. Some offer supplemental materials in the form of books or on-demand lab access, both of which incur a fee, but they are not required to complete the course material.

Training content is primarily made up of videos, but interactive components are used for knowledge checks and skill validation. Full lesson scripts are available for download in PDF format.

Many Fortinet courses offer completion certificates and may also be used to earn Continuing Professional Education credits for (ISC)² certifications such as the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). The courses identify how many hours of credit you earn and what certification domain they correspond to.