When we released the results of our survey for IT and security budget owners last year, one of the most alarming trends was that staffing and training were the areas likely to see cuts in 2023. Security problems and IT outages don’t care about difficult economic times, so slashing training budgets is likely to have disastrous effects on organizations. We get it, though. IT training and certifications can be expensive. Many IT certifications require thousands of dollars in training on top of hundreds of additional dollars to take the exams. Our training philosophy is quite simple and quite different from the rest of the industry, though.

At Cribl, we want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to learn about our products. Whether you’re a potential future customer, a new user at an existing customer, or a partner, we believe knowledge about our products should be free and easy to consume, convenient to access at any time, and at a pace desired by the learner.

A year ago, on June 28th, 2022, we launched the Cribl Certified Observability Engineer program. We established it to assist Cribl customers, as well as others in this industry, that could benefit greatly from a better understanding of key observability tools, and a working knowledge of how to unlock the value of all observability data.

Today, as we celebrate the 1 year birthday of the program, we’re excited to share some key stats about the training we’ve delivered!

#1: Time Is an Engineer’s Most Valuable Asset

Not a day goes by that I don’t see someone posting about passing their CCOE exams, and it brings such joy to my heart. Even though we offer the training and certification for free, those engineers have invested something even more valuable than money: their time. Our customers and partners have logged nearly 45,000 hours of training in just one year!

While industry certification and training costs can vary from company to company, our rough estimates show that many industry certifications require thousands of dollars in classes in order to pass the certification exam. Our conservative estimates show that a typical industry certification requires an investment of $5500 to achieve. To date, we’ve awarded nearly 3,000 Free certifications across more than 650 companies!

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With those certifications comes a solid foundation for observability engineers who are

• Improving insights from security and IT data
• Accelerating cloud migrations
• Integrating with existing tools
• Replaying data from low-cost storage
• Continuously deploying observability pipelines
• Enabling faster data onboarding and routing
• Identifying performance issues

When our customers hire new employees, they don’t have to budget thousands of dollars to get that person trained on how users manage their observability pipeline. Cribl University is there with courses and certifications ready for enrollment.

#2: Free Training Matters for Partners

For our partner community, free training and certification allow our suite of products to become a force multiplier for the community. For a partner who has 10 engineers, it could cost them $50,000+ to get them trained and certified. By offering free training and certifications, that partner can invest that money elsewhere in their business. As their business grows, they can hire additional engineers and know that Cribl is walking alongside them to train them and deploy them to serve customers.

As a top Cribl partner, we value their approach to training and seen a significant uptick in certifications since the program’s launch last year. We love the format and Cribl continues to receive high marks from our folks for its ease of accessibility and the value we’re able to drive for our mutual clients. It’s rare that we find partners that are growing as quickly as Cribl is while also ensuring that we as a partner have all of the tools we need to continue to provide positive security outcomes for our customers. GuidePoint Security is proud to be partnered with Cribl. – Mark Thornberry, VP, Vendor Management at GuidePoint Security

#3: Enterprises are Establishing the Role of an Observability Engineer

Every company has given this role a different name, whether it’s Site Reliability Engineer, Tooling Admin, or Security Analyst, among many others. It’s time to call it what it truly is—an Observability Engineer.

This role requires a specific skill set that is increasingly more important by the day. As organizations continue integrating digital processes into every fabric of their operations, individuals with these skills will be increasingly sought after.

An Observability Engineer has to be able to grasp the concept of data producers and consumers. In addition to strong technical skills and relevant certifications, they must possess curiosity, critical soft skills, and the ability to communicate effectively with both IT professionals and business stakeholders.

In a nutshell, as observability needs are growing, there is a shortage of engineers. CCOE is beginning to bridge the gap.

What’s Next?

Cribl University aims to continuously provide learners with Cribl Certified certifications and Continuing Education courses that help them successfully deploy and manage their observability and security data environments. Updates and edits are made frequently and are always aligned with Cribl product releases to ensure learners always have the most current information at their fingertips. Over the next 12-24 months, learners can expect:

• The Cribl Certified family will grow, with the addition of next-level CCOE certifications
• Advanced Troubleshooting courses where learners can pick topics that are applicable to their own environments
• A family of Criblets, which are short, sweet, and to-the-point training snippets on specific, helpful subjects
• Cribl 101s provide valuable knowledge on third-party tech and concepts so customers have what they need to be even more successful with Cribl products
• Deep Dives into Cribl Edge and Cribl Search to help expand a learner’s knowledge of their entire observability environment

Happy Birthday, CCOE!

As we celebrate the first birthday of CCOE and Cribl University, we wanted to say THANK YOU to all our customers and partners who’ve invested their valuable time in learning about our products and solutions. We’re continually investing in Cribl University to offer additional training modules as our products evolve. Stay tuned!

Ready to start your CCOE journey? Head on over to Cribl University to get started!

Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security, empowers organizations to transform their data strategy. Customers use Cribl’s suite of products to collect, process, route, and analyze all IT and security data, delivering the flexibility, choice, and control required to adapt to their ever-changing needs.

We offer free training, certifications, and a generous free usage plan across our products. Our community Slack features Cribl engineers, partners, and customers who can answer your questions as you get started. We also offer a hands-on Sandbox for those interested in how companies globally leverage our products for their data challenges.