A few months ago, Divya Vasudev upskilled herself in Cloud Management and Automation - a free online course provided by VMware, a well-known US-based software company. After taking a substantial break from her career due to personal reasons, Divya decided that it was time to reenter the workforce but not before upskilling herself through the programme.
Like Divya, there are many women out there who want to return to work but need to upskill themselves to stay current with the requirements of the industry. That was the kind of motivation VMware needed to launched this initiative - VMinclusion Taara - where women can take up online courses, which will be certified by VMware, to upskill themselves. Divya, who proudly calls herself a VMware Taara graduate, says, "VMware introduced VMinclusion Taara in October 2018 and it aims at skilling over 15,000 women in India by providing free technical education and certification courses on digital business transformation technologies. Here, candidates can expect to learn about networking, virtualisation and data centre for storage and security that play a key role in the emerging digital business technology. These skills are highly sought after in the market today and when people are offered certified courses for free, then it is an added advantage to them."
While this online programme is not time-bound like most other courses, on average, it takes about three months to finish the course. Divya says, "The programme is divided into three levels. The first level is about Digital Business Transformation (DBT) and it usually takes about 30 days to complete this level. The second level includes VMware vSphere 6.7 Foundations where candidates learn about data centre visualisation and security systems. Practical labs are the USP in this level. A timeframe of 30 days is given and by working in the labs, the participants will easily be able to assess whether they have learnt the concepts or not. The third level has four electives and one can choose the specialisation they want to get into. Once the choice is made, there is a course curriculum provided and labs to practice. Once the third level is complete, there will be a final exam that can be attended directly at the centre. Every level consists of several online programmes which includes audio and video classes. Participants can unlock each level by completing the exam at the end of the previous level."
Currently, around 4,400 women have taken up different online courses under this initiative. "Many women can take the advantage of this online programme and return to work, not just to bridge the gender gap but set the precedence of making a come-back into the industry," concludes Divya.
