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A Cloud Guru (discontinued)

Score8 out of 10

52 Reviews and Ratings

What is A Cloud Guru (discontinued)?

A Cloud Guru (ACG) was a cloud learning resource that offered access to updated courses, labs, and learning paths. In 2021 the company was acquired by Pluralsight, and its training is no longer available.

Categories & Use Cases

A Cloud Guru was the BEST learning platform that I have used. And I have used several!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I was interested in Cloud Computing options that were available, so I signed up for a one year subscription to A Cloud Guru. I completed several introductory courses and then decided to go for a certification. So I took the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course which helped me pass the certification exam on the first try. I really like the way the courses are setup and the sandbox labs which are used for completing exercises.

Pros

  • Good pace of the instructors
  • Sandbox instances for hands-on practice was excellent
  • The knowledge checks and quizzes were very helpful

Cons

  • The learning curve for using the labs was pretty tricky
  • The practice tests could have more questions
  • I remember having issues with resuming the course after a break

Return on Investment

  • A Cloud Guru has not had any impact, positive nor negative, on my overall business objectives.

Alternatives Considered

ITProTV, Udemy for Business, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) and Pluralsight Skills

Other Software Used

ITProTV, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com), Udemy for Business

My experience using A Cloud Guru

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I currently use A Cloud Guru as an admin in my organization. My role requires me to enable ACG access to employees who wants to take up cloud courses through the platform. The role also requires to continue reviewing employees who have been provided access but were not able to access the platform yet. So I will have to reach out to them, and if no response is received, I will have to de-authorize their access. The platform is very easy to use, which makes me happy to manage my organization's work on it. With the help of reporting stuff in A Cloud Guru, it is very easy for me to make the statistics for my organization every month. I also manage to take some courses through A Cloud Guru, and it is very helpful. With my background in non-IT, it was a little difficult for me to start with the training material, but the content was very easy to understand. We can create study groups in ACG so that we can easily track their progress. We can create multiple groups with the same individuals or different individuals. Also, we can reuse the licenses.

Pros

  • Reports in A Cloud Guru is quite easy. We can simply track progress of individuals.
  • Wide range of materials in A Cloud Guru helps individuals to prepare for different certifications.
  • When Linux Academy was acquired by A Cloud Guru, it was mentioned that all the courses would be migrated to ACG from Linux. However, for a long time, it has not happened. So users from Linux were not aware and happy about this migration.

Cons

  • I don't think there are any features which are hard to use.
  • A Cloud Guru is just perfect.
  • Easy to use.

Return on Investment

  • Most individuals from my organization prefer A Cloud Guru to take up cloud courses.
  • Most of the trained individuals are from A Cloud Guru.
  • Study groups make the job easy for admins to track a group's progress.

Other Software Used

Asana, Salesforce CMS, Workday Human Capital Management

ACG to help increase training quality.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Educating and providing the opportunity for employees to advance in their cloud computing journey. We help allow employees to use their free time and dedicated company training days to freely move around all the offered training as part of ACG. Together with ACG, we developed training paths that guide employees across all the available training.

Pros

  • Self guided Trainings
  • Online/Offline and ad-hoc video trainings
  • Exam preparation
  • Cloud Sandboxes

Cons

  • Keep up to date with new Exams
  • Provide more capabilities in the Sandboxes
  • A few more hand-on trainings matching the video lectures

Return on Investment

  • Higher education and skills of employees

A Cloud Guru works well as part of the Cyber Academy Program

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At PwC, we use A Cloud Guru as part of the Cyber Academy program to uplift our team member's cloud knowledge and skills. We encourage the team to do the training at their own pace and get certified.

Pros

  • Course materials (video)
  • Reference materials
  • Lab

Cons

  • Mock exam
  • Comparison / linking between certifications (high level introduction)

Return on Investment

  • Helpful for gaining certificates quickly
  • Encourage team to develop their cloud knowledge and skills contiously

Other Software Used

Offensive Security Pentest Services

Get your Cloud App up and running with ACG

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cloud Guru is a fantastic tool for folks who need to learn a variety on AWS skills or pursue professional certifications

Pros

  • Prep/Earn AWS Certifications
  • Learn new apps as they emerge
  • hands on labs
  • Practice Exams

Cons

  • Practice Exams are too easy vs real exams
  • Some video aren't in depth enough
  • lag on caption videos

Return on Investment

  • We have saved on storage with AWS S3
  • We have saved on Captions with AWS Transcribe
  • We reached an international audience with AWS Translate and Polly

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Drive

Other Software Used

Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Polly, Amazon Translate