NAB Cloud Guild reaches more than 7000 staff

NAB has now trained more than 7000 staff in cloud skills with over 1300 individuals becoming AWS certified, two-and-a-half years after the bank launched a 'Cloud Guild'.

The bank created its NAB Cloud Guild program in 2018 to prepare staff for its large-scale migration into the cloud.

Less than a year ago, NAB said 4500 employees had been trained through the Cloud Guild, and that the bank was home to seven percent of all AWS certifications in Australia and New Zealand, second only to AWS itself.

NAB Cloud Guild leader Matt Cobby said in an AWS blog post that the bank has now "trained more than 7000 staff to help them build cloud skills, and over 1300 individuals have achieved AWS Certification to validate those skills."

Cobby said that Covid-19 had forced the bank to shift its training methods from in-person cloud training to virtual teaching, and that this had led to significant upside for the bank and the program.

"We found virtual training delivery enabled us to reach more employees," Cobby said.

"We were no longer constrained by the size of a room or location of a learner.

"As a result of this virtual shift, we trained over 1000 people on AWS in 2020."

Cobby said the large upskilling of NAB staff had enabled the bank to accelerate its adoption of cloud and identify transformation opportunities for "thousands of workloads" that could be migrated into the cloud.

“By supporting AWS certification, we’ve enabled our employees to be more engaged, more productive, and more innovative," he said.

"Our systems have better availability, which ultimately benefits our customers.”