Skills Network

Skills Network is an IBM initiative that gives companies and schools their own private learning portal, stocked with a catalog of hands-on technology courses and guided projects and backed by browser-based virtual labs. The homepage addresses three groups: enterprises that want to upskill employees, education organizations that want to teach current technologies, and creators, authors and educators who want to publish content through its Author Workbench. The enterprise page sums up the offer as "a hosted learning portal that is owned and operated by you", while IBM runs the infrastructure. The subject matter is technical throughout: machine learning, cloud, containers, data science tools and IBM's own platforms.

What an organization gets

A portal is a private platform for upskilling people through courses and guided projects. The homepage says that "When you sign up for a Portal, you get a modern, powerful, fully featured Learning Management System (LMS) operated by us", and the enterprise page lists what comes with it:

• a hands-on Virtual Lab environment in the browser, opened with one click
• internal competitions and hackathons run from inside the portal
• a subscription to the catalog, "a growing library of courses & guided projects"
• an integrated CMS to "Publish, modify and author your own courses & guided projects"
• scheduling and management for in-person and virtual events
• badges and certificates to recognize achievements
• "multiple personal learning assistants to help your learners every step of the way"
• dedicated support: "we're just a Slack message or email away"

Administration happens in the portal's admin dashboard, where, in the page's words, "you will be able to select courses, setup competitions, view statistics and much more". Courses go into the portal by "one-click installation", and learning journeys are built from catalog courses and guided projects "with the click of a button". The page also mentions collaboration tools "from integrated video conferencing to an internal hackathon framework", and the homepage adds virtual meetings to the ways a company can engage its employees.

The catalog

The catalog runs from beginner to expert difficulty. The enterprise page names the technology areas it covers, each with a one-line description: Machine Learning, Serverless computing, Blockchain, Cloud computing, Edge computing, Microservices, IoT, Containers, Jupyter, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Node-RED, Theia and RStudio. Sample achievement posts on the page mention completing "Deep Learning using TensorFlow" and "Data Science Fundamentals", which gives a sense of the course level.

Because organizations can add their own material through the CMS, the portal is not limited to the catalog. The page contrasts its approach with platforms where "Learners are taught what the vendor makes available": on Skills Network, "You decide what your team should learn using courses from our catalog and your own."

Virtual labs

The labs are the feature that sets the product apart. The enterprise page says the Virtual Labs Environment "lets your learners use tools like watsonx, AI Classroom, Cloud IDE, JupyterLab, Zeppelin, Computer Vision Studio, Datasette, RStudio and more in an isolated environment." It stresses that these are the real tools, "No sandboxes, no emulators", and lists Cloud IDE, JupyterLab, OpenShift, Docker, Kubernetes and RStudio among them.

Learners build, test and experiment with code in the web browser, with "no dependency conflicts, no download and no installation process". Persistent sessions keep work in place, so a learner can "Come back a day or a month later and pick up right where you left off." For deployment, the lab environment "can be self-hosted on OpenShift or used as a SaaS product through a web browser". The homepage counts "30 Million +" labs launched by learners in their browser every year.

The page frames the teaching approach as learning by doing rather than memorizing: "With conventional learning... Learners use instructors, books and other online resources", while on Skills Network "Learners acquire skills by practical application & experimentation", and learning is centered on the learner rather than the instructor.

Hackathons, events and certificates

For engagement, a portal can host internal competitions. The enterprise page says a company can "Set up internal events and hackathons for your employees in as little as 15 minutes", framed as a way to "Tackle your organization's biggest problems with spirited competition". Event scheduling covers in-person and virtual events.

Completing courses and learning paths earns certificates and badges. The page says these are "branded with your logo and/or the IBM logo" and "serve as proof that a skill has been acquired". They are completion credentials, and the homepage counts more than 2M verified course certificates issued.

Security and integration

Each portal "is deployed as a private web application. Dedicated infrastructure means your data is exclusive to you and your organization." The homepage adds: "As an IBM initiative, we always follow industry standard security guidelines." For integration, the enterprise page says portals "are made to work in conjunction with your existing systems" and names four areas: Single Sign On (SSO), LMS & CMS Services, User Support Services and Custom Domain.

Scale and pricing

The enterprise page states that there are "Over 200 private portals deployed", "Over 9M learners enrolled", "Over 2M verified course certificates issued" and an "Average rating of 4.7 out of 5 for courses in our catalog". The homepage gives 200+ companies using its portals and 9 Million+ learners enrolled in courses and guided projects. The site publishes no prices; every route leads to a "Contact us" form.

For authors and schools

Creators, bloggers, authors and educators can publish through the Author Workbench. The homepage pitch is "You bring your skills, we'll do everything else", with the promise to "Get noticed by IBM's biggest customers" and reach "a global audience of emerging talent and industry leaders". For schools and universities, the pitch is to teach "the latest trending technologies" and to help students build their careers rather than only earn a degree. The footer also points to CognitiveClass, the community initiative it follows.

Who Skills Network suits

Skills Network suits an enterprise technology, data or engineering group that wants a private, IBM-hosted portal where staff learn cloud, containers, machine learning and data tools by actually running them, with hackathons to put the skills to work and branded certificates as proof. A corporate academy that already writes its own material can add it through the CMS and keep everything under its own domain with SSO. A university or college teaching applied computing gets lab environments without installing software on student machines.

It is a narrow fit for training outside technology. The catalog areas listed are all technical, so an L&D team looking for leadership, compliance or soft-skills content would need another library alongside, and buyers who want a published price will need to contact the team.