Oracle has announced it’s offering free access to its online learning content and cloud certifications while swathes of workers are in coronavirus lockdown. 

The aim is to help IT professionals gain highly sought after skills while the coronavirus pandemic enforces remote or reduced working, according to Oracle.

The courses and certifications cover Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Autonomous Database and will be available until 15 May. There are seven learning paths that users can access with an Oracle Single-Sign-On account, which is also free.

Oracle users, developers, technical professionals, architects, students and professors will have access to more than 50 hours of online training and six certification exams, according to Raghu Viswanathan, the VP of education products and delivery at Oracle University.

«As our customers adapt to a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Oracle is stepping up its efforts to help build critical technical cloud skills they need to ramp up innovation,» Viswanathan said in a statement.

«We believe that certifications help professionals develop in-demand skills, shorten turnaround times for customer projects, enhance their expertise and advance their careers while improving their overall job performance.»

The free access will include an extensive library of materials for Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database, as well as content on topics like machine learning, data science and multi-cloud environments, which includes integrations with Microsoft Azure.

With these courses, the company is also going to offer access to high-quality video content, experts and recorded demos of hands-on labs, all of which will be available anywhere and anytime. This will include machine learning translations for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries.

Like Oracle, a number of tech companies have offered some services for free while the coronavirus outback drastically changes the way we live and work. Companies like Microsoft, which has offered Teams as a free service to the NHS and RingVPN, which has made the first 90 days of its service free of charge.