According to the NASSCOM, as of 2020, India's IT workforce accounts for 4.36 million employees. It won't be wrong saying this lockdown has been the best time to brush up our skills especially when there are many layoffs happening. Indulging oneself into learning new skills would be a plus point to secure one's current position in the organisation. One of the biggest challenges that an IT professional faces is the skill gap.

According to a survey by advisory firm EY on the impact of Covid-19 on businesses showed that around 70 per cent of the organisations believe that 'fall in productivity' is the single biggest concern for continued remote working. Hence, the IT companies are providing online learning and skill development programs to their employees, so that they have a better management.

The best part of e-learning is, one can learn their set of skills at their own pace. Once you enroll in a course, you can finish it at your own leisure time. Secondly, it is cost effective as compared to the physical classes. Many online e-learning platforms provide free updated learning materials as well. Likewise there are some e-learning platforms that offer a great variety of courses for IT Professionals as mentioned below:

Skillsoft
Skillsoft's e-learning platform provides IT professionals with the most extensive course library in the world. With 7,150+ courses, 110+ Practice Labs, and 10+ live online bootcamps across 67 subjects, learners have access to unlimited learning at every step of their career. Courses are developed based on the science of learning and designed to allow them to learn in ways that make sense for them. Learning is not restricted to just one mode but allows learners to choose from videos, books, audio books and more.

Today's learners need personalized learning experience and that's exactly what Skillsoft's e-learning platform offers - a personalized homepage, the ability to create playlists, pick up learning where they left off, and receive assignments. IT professionals can accelerate their learning through our cloud-based application, which is continuously updated. With 24/7 access and even a mobile app, learning can happen anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Learners can also earn Digital Badges for successful completion of Skillsoft courses.

More than a “gold star” or static image, Skillsoft Digital Badges represent legitimate, authenticated achievements and are a valuable addition to the modern learner’s virtual profile. Skillsoft Digital Badges are verifiable and portable, thanks to embedded metadata about who earned the badge, who issued it, and what was required to receive it.

Udemy
With a mission to improve lives through learning, Udemy is the world’s largest online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. Udemy helps organizations of all kinds prepare for the ever-evolving future of work.

Their curated collection of top-rated business and technical courses gives companies, governments, and nonprofits the power to develop in-house expertise and satisfy employees’ hunger for learning and development. For companies, Udemy for Business offers an employee training and development platform with subscription access to 7,000+ courses, learning analytics, as well as the ability to host and distribute their own content.

Coursera
Coursera was founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to anyone, anywhere. It is now a leading online learning platform for higher education, where 71 million learners from around the world come to learn skills of the future. More than 200 of the world’s top universities and industry educators partner with Coursera to offer courses, Specializations, certificates, and degree programs.

Thousands of companies trust the company’s enterprise platform Coursera for Business to transform their talent. Coursera for Government equips government employees and citizens with in-demand skills to build a competitive workforce.

PluralSight
Pluralsight is the leading technology workforce development company that helps companies and teams build better products by developing critical skills, improving processes and gaining insights through data, and providing strategic skills consulting. Trusted by forward-thinking companies of every size in every industry, Pluralsight helps individuals and businesses transform with technology.

Pluralsight Skills helps enterprises build technology skills at scale with expert-authored courses on today’s most important technologies, including cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, and security, among others. Skills also includes tools to align skill development with business objectives, virtual instructor-led training, hands-on labs, skill assessments and one-of-a-kind analytics. Flow complements Skills by providing engineering teams with actionable data and visibility into workflow patterns to accelerate the delivery of products and services.

DataCamp
DataCamp helps companies answer their most challenging questions by making better use of data. Our learners build and maintain data fluency on the world's most advanced data science and analytics learning platform. Because modern occupations require lifelong education, users learn continuously from the world's top data science instructors. And they learn by doing—coding in the browser, and responding to immediate feedback.

DataCamp enables managers to build data fluency across an organization, regardless of size or structure. We've already educated 6 million people around the world at more than 1,200 companies such as Credit Suisse, Deloitte, Intel, Uber and more.