Telia teaches 2000 employees how to use AWS

Swedish operator group Telia has brought in Amazon Web Services to upskill 10% of its workforce to use cloud technologies over the next 3 years.

Apparently it’s the largest in-house AWS training program in the Nordic region to date, which is one for the mantlepiece.

Citing a growing need for expertise in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, the training programme is apparently designed to accelerate the firm’s ‘cloud first strategy’ in order that they can help build out cloud-based ML applications, alongside the existing 800 software developers already using AWS to knock out cloud applications.

“Telia has embarked on one of the telecom industry’s most ambitious digital transformation journeys and cloud, big data, analytics, and AI are at the heart of this transformation,” said Rainer Deutschmann, Group Chief Operating Officer at Telia. “We now extend our collaboration with AWS to launch the Nordic region’s largest in-house AWS training program to date where we over the next three years will upskill 10 percent of Telia’s total workforce on AWS and cloud technologies to achieve cloud fluency for a total of 2,000 colleagues. This initiative complements our ongoing wider product and technology skills augmentation with currently 4,000 active learners. I am very excited to see our talents grow and develop, which is a critical foundation for sustainable delivery of our transformation”.

Fabio Cerone, Managing Director, EMEA Telecom Industry Business Unit at AWS, added: “Telia continues to demonstrate a commitment to pursuing modern and innovative strategies to optimize its business and better serve its customers. From its recent new serverless data platform and AI capabilities, to migration of SAP S/4HANA to AWS, and now its expanded investment in upskilling, Telia proves they are embracing the future and that AWS cloud technology sits at the core of their way forward. We look forward to continue working with Telia to support their digital transformation and their ambition to be one of the best tech employers in the Nordics.”

Whenever firms talk about bringing in AI or technology in general to automate or ‘modernise’ operations, it’s often easy to assume old fashioned human beings will at some point be out of a job. There’s often lip service paid to ‘upskilling’ workers who’s day-to-day activities are deemed cheaper/better done something less fleshy, which always begs the question – what if they don’t want to become coders?

It’s a question all big companies are going to face, and modernisation is of course inevitable if you want to keep trading into the future. But on the surface this move from Telior does at least sound like the firm is putting some effort in to bringing along existing employees for the ride.

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