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The initiative, dubbed Katalyst, is the brainchild of Richard Regan, Google Cloud's chief engineering partner for the UK and Ireland, and is aimed at making cloud employment more accessible to those who are typically underrepresented in the area.

Regan says the idea for the Katalyst programme came after a CTO meeting at a Google networking event, where participants complained about a lack of talent in the cloud industry.

"All the leaders in the room were finding it incredibly difficult to hire, train and retain top cloud talent. I was hosting this forum and so went away to think how we could best solve this challenge and grow the pool of available cloud-skilled individuals," Regan wrote.

The experiences of the delegates at the Google event are consistent with the observations made by market analysts like Gartner. The research firmhas previously spoken about the detrimental impact the cloud skills shortage will have on the ability of businesses to carry out their digital transformation plans in the years to come.

The firm predicted in 2020 that a dearth of professionals with skills and experience working on public cloud and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) deployments would cause organisations to wait two years or more to migrate their on-premise workloads.

"We wanted to do something locally, to help grow the pool of available skilled individuals, ideally tapping into under-represented groups," Regan said.

He conceived a cloud training programme that would provide equal access to job prospects for young people who may not have had the opportunity to attend university, providing these groups a way into a well-paid, and growing market.

Google approached the skills charity Generation UK to help get the initiative off the ground quickly.

Generation UK specialises in offering education and training to help individuals find jobs in areas that are traditionally off-limits or inaccessible to them.

The Katalyst pilot programme lasts 12 weeks and includes technical and soft skills training.

During the course, participants will complete the Google Cloud Digital Leader certification as well as much of the training for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer certification.

Once they start at Google Cloud Partners, they will be required to obtain the Google Cloud Associate Engineer certification within the first six months of their new position.

Participants will then get the opportunity to meet and interview for confirmed positions at Google Cloud Partners in London, with annual salaries of up to 30,000 (this is slightly below average for an associate cloud engineer, but within the bounds of reason for a new starter - Ed.).

After a successful pilot, Google intends to extend the initiative to several sites throughout the UK and overseas, as well as at its customers' organisations.

This is a great move by Google and Generation UK. Although the tech industry has a long way to go, it has at least begun to recongise the importance of bringing in new people from under-represented groups like women and ethnic minorities. Until now, though, too little attention has been paid to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Google and Generation UK work to bring young Brits into cloud computing - http://www.computing.co.uk