Bhavesh Goswami is the CEO & Founder of CloudThat. He spoke to Digital Learning magazine.
Please share about your brand.
I came to India after working for companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft since 2005 in the US. I came to India in 2012. By then, the concept of the Cloud was still in its infancy stage in India. I had a mission of building an organization to nurture a strong cloud landscape by training individuals and corporates to be cloud ready. Thus, CloudThat was incepted. In this decade’s endeavor, we have helped 400k+ professionals trained on Azure, AWS, and Google cloud platforms. Through this process, we have created strategic partnerships with cloud stalwarts. Today, we are a Microsoft Gold Partner, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, AWS Authorized Training Partner, Google Cloud Partner. The new feather in our cap is affixed by recently becoming a VMware Authorized Training Reseller.
How have the various facets of cloud computing transformed the education landscape?
The Education Landscape has transformed rapidly from the traditional brick-mortar stereotypes to a technology-enabled, virtual learning platform-centric system in recent years.
As the entire globe went through the pandemic crisis, a drift towards online schooling and e-learning was witnessed. A plethora of educational applications provided by G-Suite for education from Google, Office 365 Education from Microsoft, Moodle Cloud, Blackboard, Naviance, and many more academic learning management tools aptly help us to understand the power of collaboration and the flexibility the cloud applications have brought into the classrooms.
A wide array of benefits has been witnessed in the educational sphere through cloud adoption; salient ones are:
- Digital content has helped lower-income students immensely as buying expensive textbooks is no longer needed.
- Unnecessarily investing in expensive hardware and software is not needed. For instance, WhatsApp being an integral part of every household, WhatsApp-based classrooms have gained popularity across different segments of education.
- Fool-proof data security of study materials, student data, academic records, administrative documents is ensured.
How can Cloud computing delve deep into the Indian education ecosystem to bring a significant change?
Many educationists in the past and of recent days have one big complaint about the Indian education system, and that is- ‘Our system encourages rote-learning, and a rat-race with no emphasis on fostering problem-solving and analytical abilities in children and youth.’
This is emphasized by a recent Statista report that says 50% of higher educational and professional degrees holders are not employable in India. So, the education system needs restructuring, and technology like Cloud can act as a panacea to get the system overhauled.
Cloud Computing makes education accessible to students from all strata of society. For instance, CloudThat training on niche technologies like Azure, AWS, GCP, VMware clouds, DevOps, AI/ML, Big Data, and IoT are accessible to students from the remotest places of the nation.
Further, enhancing the quality of education is an important change that can be envisioned as what cloud technologies bring into play. For instance, the expertise of a renowned teacher can be shared with a wider pool of learners’ communities by embracing cloud technologies.
Where do you see the future of digital transformations in terms of education, and how can it lead to simpler, efficient solutions?
Digital Transformation has rapidly changed the classrooms of current days. Students today are learning in a collaborative and interactive environment, and teachers are quickly making changes to the delivery methods by incorporating technology tools.
According to me the factors that are driving digital transformation in the educational realm are Student success rate, Student-centric delivery, affordability, campus security, digital integration, and precisely building a strong IT foundation is key for realizing a digitally transformed campus.
