A Cloud Guru (discontinued) vs. Skillsoft Coaching vs. Study Island

If your organization is technical-based and offers its employees different online courses to enhance their knowledge, then A Cloud Guru will be perfect for you. There are multiple courses available from different cloud platforms. The platform is easy to use and navigate and does not require much knowledge. Even if you do not have basic technical knowledge, the courses available in A Cloud Guru are designed in such a manner that a non-technical person will understand the concept easily.

Incentivized

They have a large library - make sure you clearly study the library offerings and choose the courses that are best for you as you will never be able to use all of them. Make sure you survey your user base before purchasing the licensing of the library courses so the courses are 'marked' with an employee in mind to keep costs minimized. Only purchase the Books 24x7 if you have a large IT department - otherwise you might want to lease a smaller content portion. Their Leadership Development, Project Management, business series and critical thinking and technical products are exceptional.

Incentivized

Over all, I was very impressed with my experience using Study Island. I think that it provides a great resource for teachers of larger groups of students. On the other hand, it may not be as worthwhile of an investment in a small group or individual student level. All in all, kids love this program, and it provides teachers with an in-depth look at how a child is progressing or understanding the content/standard being covered in the Study Island activity. The colors are fun, the graphics are fun, and the questions are nicely organized and customizable.

Incentivized

• The team at A Cloud Guru is excellent at responding to user feedback that is submitted through their website.
• The content created is well organized and aligns to certification paths.
• The content is accessible on mobile and web platforms, which is great for learning on the go.

Incentivized

• Covers a wide-breadth of topics ranging from desktop / office skills to communications skills to leadership development
• Offers knowledge portals (Knowledge Centers) around specific topic areas such as Management Development, Six Sigma, Professional Foundations, Sales, etc - that aggregate content from the large Skillsoft resources and present it in a way that is both meaningful and relevant to the learners. Plus, they have editors update the featured topic each month.
• Include a wide variety of learning media such as eLearning courses, books, book summaries and videos.

Incentivized

• Fun user-friendly format.
• Engaging games for students.
• Easy to navigate for all teachers, regardless of their familiarity with computers.

Incentivized

• More material on other cloud providers GCP, Azure, Huawei.
• Extend the sandboxes to other cloud providers not only AWS.
• Include more material for non-technical people, sometimes the sales teams are completely lost in the platform but they would like to learn about it.

Incentivized

• The platform does have room to improve their response time for assistance. Depending on the issue an internal "help team may be required"
• They removed what was called "knowledge centers" which could be summed up as an accumulation of books, courses, exams, practice exams, articles and basically any asset within the platform surrounded by a particular subject. This was a great benefit to some of our customer. It was a one-stop-shop but now you would need to search independently for all of those assets.
• Because the platforms library can be customized its a bit of a struggle to have certain assets changed or modified within Skillsoft. You basically are on their time when it comes to updates or any major changes you as a customer would like to make.

Incentivized

• The program would be great with seasonal games.

Incentivized

I would recommend to renew as this is part of our employee development goals and we make a strong commitment to develop employees' people skills. I think SkillSoft has a very innovative approach to develop people's interpersonal skills other than traditional classroom learning.

Incentivized

There are things that could be easier. Having a more customizable carousel that can rotate relevant content in and out on a regular basis would be nice. They could also make some of the video content more engaging. Some of it is pretty dull and people can lose interest pretty fast.

Incentivized

The support team of A Cloud Guru is quite quick. There are scenarios where A Cloud Guru was not working in my organization. We reached out to their support team and they quickly resolved the issue. Also, if any individual is facing issues accessing A Cloud Guru, their support team is quick to resolve the issue.

Incentivized

Very responsive, knowledge and helpful. They are always focused on ensuring they are doing the very best to support our success.

Incentivized

Just that it takes a village. It cannot be done alone. Everyone needs to know what you are doing and what their role is in the implementation. Tightly managing the project management schedule and resources is important in ensuring that everything gets done on time, and with quality. Education is KEY

Incentivized

The main differentiator was the contents as we were interested in a cloud platform other similar platforms did not have the below: it is very good to establish cloud learning development plans and then track them and manage them for the team. The platform supports learning tracks, exams, and sandboxes with all major cloud providers guarantees that you don't get an accidental charge as a result of [the] testing and exploring the cloud

Incentivized

We chose SkillSoft for the overall ease of use for both our users and our administrators and have a great value proposition. We have continued our contracts for the same reasons and the relationship we have built with our Learning Consultant and Account Representative.

Incentivized

I didn't choose Study Island over Renaissance Accelerated Math. Study Island doesn't offer the in-depth review of standards over and over like Renaissance Accelerated Math does. Plus, Renaissance Accelerated Math also makes them wait 2 weeks then re-introduces the standards they have mastered to make sure they still have that mastery, and if they don't, it makes them re-do that standard.

Incentivized

• Engagement scores around investment in L&D have increased.
• There's excitement around upcoming changes to our technology instead of fear we have seen in the past.
• We feel confident we will be able to deliver these new technologies - although we are at the start of our journey.

Incentivized

• The ability to have on-demand training saves money in not having to have an in-house trainer.
• Employees can complete training on their own time (even at home), so if they need more time for a training, they can complete it on their own time.

Incentivized

• It has put teachers on the same page since we are all using the same platform
• It has improved student test scores and retention
• It has given us a platform to create and give student assessments in a fun way outside the typical classroom setting

Incentivized