Submitted by Elizabeth Coyne, the Managing Editor at Light Reading, who is responsible for driving the curriculum and direction of Upskill U.

The impact of cloud services and platforms on the telecom sector has been nothing short of revolutionary. Without the cloud, there would be no NFV, SDN, IoT, white boxes or open source and all those other buzzwords that have taken our industry in new and exciting directions. Plus, we have the cloud to thank for re-energizing the industry around collaboration and for pushing traditional waterfall management-style businesses into Agile and Dev/Ops methodologies.

For these reasons and more, Light Reading and Cisco are diving into cloud platforms and services for the next round of courses at Upskill U, a free online university aimed at upskilling and reskilling the communications industry on a variety of key topics essential to success in the virtualized, software-based future.

Our powerful cloud line-up features four highly relevant courses taught by industry thought leaders:

Cloud Platforms & Services 101(Wednesday, May 18, 1:00 p.m. ET): This introductory course taught by Jim Hodges, Senior Analyst, Core Network Evolution & Analytics, Heavy Reading, covers all the important aspects of transforming to cloud-based networks and services, including what it means for service providers, why it's important, how it's impacting the industry, the challenges and benefits and more. This course prepares students for subsequent courses on cloud platforms and services.

Cloudifying the Network(Friday, May 20, 1:00 p.m. ET): During this course, Mary Stanhope, Vice President, Marketing, Global Capacity, looks at how interconnection is evolving to meet the on-demand enterprise requirements, including the evolution of exchanges and the expansion of traditional colocation.

Assuring Security in a Cloud-Based NFVi(Wednesday, June 8, 1:00 p.m. ET): In this lecture, Patrick Donegan, Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading, covers ways of ensuring that security is preserved in the NFV environment and the security orchestration and other technologies needed for virtual networks.

Ethernet & the Cloud(Friday, June 10, 1:00 p.m. ET): Chris McReynolds, Vice President, Cloud & Data Services, Level 3 Communications, will discuss how the rise of virtualization is creating new demand for network-as-a-service options that combine physical and virtual network elements flexibly, while also delivering on the quality promises for which Carrier Ethernet has become known.

Plus, don't miss our Upskill U Live @ BCE classes on 5G and mobile video. We'll be live-streaming the classes to Upskill U from Light Reading's flagship BCE event in Austin on May 24 and 25 at 8:30 a.m. ET.

5G: Are We There Yet?(Tuesday, May 24, 8:30 a.m. ET) taught by Gerry Flynn, Director, Corporate Technology, Verizon Communications, and Gabriel Brown, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading.

Mobile Video: Finding a Solution(Wednesday, May 25, 8:30 a.m. ET) taught by Upinder Saini, Vice President, Wireless Product Management, Rogers Communications, and Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading.

As you can see, with our cloud courses and BCE, we've lined up an exciting May and June at Upskill U. I look forward to seeing you all on the Upskill U message boards.

For the complete Upskill U schedule, visit our website: www.lightreading.com/upskillu.