News

Online Tech Trainer Pluralsight to Acquire A Cloud Guru

• By John K. Waters
• June 3, 2021

Technology workforce development company Pluralsight has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the cloud skills development platform A Cloud Guru (ACG), the company announced. The acquisition is expected to close later this year.

Pluralsight, which was itself recently acquired by Vista Equity Partners, provides an online learning platform for technology-based professions, such as IT operations, security, and software development, as well as leadership courses for managers and product leaders.

A Cloud Guru is an online learning provider that is totally cloud-focused. The company bills itself as "the world’s most comprehensive, hands-on, and effective SaaS platform for cloud learning. The company claims to have educated 2.5 million learners and worked with more than 4,500 organizations.

With this acquisition, Pluralsight aims to address burgeoning demand for cloud skills in the enterprise.

"Technology is the number one differentiator for all businesses and the technology skills of your team is what determines success or failure," said Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight, in a statement. "Nowhere is that more apparent than with cloud technologies…. With the acquisition of A Cloud Guru, we can now provide an all-in-one solution to accelerate the cloud skill development journey for large enterprise customers and individual learners."

"By combining the power of A Cloud Guru’s leading certification courses, hands-on labs and sandboxes, exams and quizzes with the existing library of Pluralsight Skills cloud courses and hands-on learning experiences, the joint organization will now be better positioned to meet the market demand for cloud skill development," the company said.

ACG and Pluralsight were founded to solve the same problem, says Sam Kroonenburg, co-founder and CEO of A Cloud Guru, closing the technology skills gap by democratizing access to technical education.

"Within our shared missions, we’ve taken different but complementary approaches, Kroonenburg said in a statement. "Both approaches have proven to resonate strongly with customers who want depth and breadth in tech education."

Pluralsight's courses are "expert-authored" and focused on such in-demand technologies cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, and security. Pluralsight Skills includes tools to align skill development with business objectives, virtual instructor-led training, hands-on labs, skill assessments, and analytics. Pluralsight Flow complements Skills by providing engineering teams with actionable data and visibility into workflow patterns to accelerate the delivery of products and services.