Data scientists and data analysts as well as engineers and developers with the skills to work with big data technologies are sought after and well-compensated. IT professionals who want an extra edge looking for their next job want to be big data certified.
Data and big data analytics are becoming the life's blood of business. Data scientists and analysts with expertise in the techniques required to analyze big data and engineers and developers are hard to come by. The number of big data certification courses is expanding at a rapid speed. There are a number of free or paid courses offered by several companies online.
IBM is only one of them. IBM's Big Data University is Free Online Learning with over 400,000 students. Its mission is explained as follows:
"Our mission at Big Data University is to democratize access to practical skills for working with data. To do so we need to remove two big impediments: money and time. To that end, we made everything that you need to learn free. Free courses, free access to all the tools, free data – free everything and not for a few days or weeks – forever.
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For several courses IBM issues IBM Open Digital Badges that can be displayed on your LinkedIn profile, your site, other social media sites, or even in your email signature. In short, you’ll have proof of your achievement in addition to gaining practical skill and self confidence. Big Data University is not an accredited institution (i.e., it does not award degrees).
IBM has three versions of Big Data University, to better address the needs of the world wide audience:
http://bigdatauniversity.com aims at the world at large. It primarily provides courses in English, but does have some courses in Japanese, Spanish and Russian.
http://BigDataUniversity.com.br launched at the end of July 2015 for students in Brazil. It offers courses in Portuguese (so also handy for students from Portugal )
http://BigDataUniversity.com.cn launched at the end of August 2015 for students in China. It offers courses in Mandarin. The site and all of the course material are hosted in China.
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