The Alamo Colleges have received a multimillion dollar grant from the Texas Workforce Commission to train 1,000 rackers. The Rackspace employees will receive special training for cloud computing from the Alamo Colleges.
The $2.5 million awarded to the school from the Workforce Commission's Skills Development Fund will create a tailored program called the Cloud Academy.
Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Andres Alcantar said the grant was given to the Alamo Colleges specifically to be used for Rackspace.
"The skills that are evolving and changing are those that will be required for new employees," said Alcantar, "and we come together to make sure that the curriculum is developed to align with these new opportunities, and to make sure that individuals are successful when they go to work for these companies."
The employees will train out of Northeast Lakeview College. Kathi Ashworth is the school's dean of workforce development and said they'll be learning the languages for programs like Linux and other systems.
"There are not any existing programs for training in those languages at this point," she said. "So we'll be taking people that have some technical IT skills and training them in the software development aspect of IT."
Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said the company will be part of the process that designs the curriculum.
"Those programs will basically train existing employees and new employees around how to use cloud technologies, how to deliver the cloud services that we provide out of Rackspace. So we will use those programs to really educate our workforce." Napier said.
The 1000 Rackspace employees will be located to San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, and make about $25 per hour. Once the employees are situated, the classes will be open to the community.
