MongoDB University Expands Education Outreach With New Partnerships

Steve Jurczak
June 14, 2023

MongoDB is paving the way for the future of development and looking to bridge the software development skills gap through partnerships with leading online learning platforms. New partnerships with LinkedIn Learning and Coursera will make MongoDB University content widely available to new learners. And, to enable traditionally underrepresented groups to advance their skills with MongoDB, we're providing free certifications to developers through Women Who Code, MyTechDev, and Lesbians Who Tech & Allies. The new partnerships are part of the MongoDB for Academia program, which gives educators access to free MongoDB Atlas credits and certifications. We're also excited to announce new online learning courses to teach database administrators and SQL professionals the power of non-relational database technologies.

Supply, demand, and closing the skills gap

Today's tech industry faces immense demand for software engineers to create new applications, and choosing the right database technology is essential for success. It establishes the backbone and influences the speed of building, deploying, and updating an application. These newly announced initiatives will make it easier than ever for developers to quickly learn how to leverage MongoDB and use it to build and deploy successful applications within high-demand industries across the globe — rapidly closing the gap on the current software engineer shortage.

MongoDB for Academia will provide educators and students with the opportunity to hone their database development skills for free. The initiative offers more than $400,000 of MongoDB Atlas credits, free certification, access to free curriculum resources, and the GitHub Student Developer Pack, giving students around the world the opportunity to enter the workforce with relevant certifications and skills.

With the addition of MongoDB University developer courses on LinkedIn Learning, millions of people across the globe have access to an expansive range of software development skills. Offering courses in Introduction to MongoDB as well as Java, Python, C#, and Node.js, these courses have been bundled into Learning Paths, creating the perfect platform for students aiming to pass MongoDB's Associate Developer certification. This partnership between MongoDB University and LinkedIn provides a chance to upskill the knowledge base of existing and aspiring software developers. Last year, 446 million skills were added to LinkedIn profiles.

By joining forces with Coursera, MongoDB University is taking its Introduction to MongoDB course to a new level. The course will now be available to 124 million global learners through the Coursera platform. Upon completion, learners will receive an electronic and physical certificate to add to their education portfolio. With this new partnership, learners will have access to official educational materials actively developed and maintained by MongoDB experts.

For experienced SQL professionals looking to expand their skills, MongoDB University is rolling out a new online learning path: MongoDB for SQL Professionals. With this course, students will gain the knowledge and expertise they need to tackle complex non-relational databases and develop powerful, innovative applications. Since refreshing MongoDB University last November, more than 50,000 developers have taken advantage of the free, ungated courses per month with more than 600 individuals becoming certified professionals.

Normalizing diversity

MongoDB is proud to also be partnering with leading diversity and inclusion advocacy groups to make software development a more welcoming profession for underrepresented groups. Through the new partnership with Women Who Code, MongoDB seeks to certify 100 members by the end of 2023. Women Who Code is an international non-profit organization that provides programming assistance to women pursuing technology careers. MongoDB University is also partnering with Lesbians Who Tech & Allies to certify 100 members beginning in October 2023. Lesbians Who Tech & Allies is a community of LGBTQ women, non-binary, and transgender individuals in and around tech. Finally, by partnering with MyTechDev, a non-profit organization focused on empowering African students, MongoDB hopes to provide practical coding skills and specialization pathways in enterprise technologies. The initiative seeks to certify 500 people in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt over the next two years.

These exciting new partnerships are all part of our mission to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. To start learning with MongoDB University, visit learn.mongodb.com.

← Previous

New Online Archive with Performance Improvements and Enhanced Metrics

We are excited to announce several new features coming to Atlas Online Archive. With these improvements, customers will observe higher performance, be able to choose which region hosts their archival data, and have greater insight into the data stored in the archive through improved metrics. New storage engine We have optimized Online Archive through the introduction of a new storage engine that captures metadata during archival to power faster query performance. The new underlying storage service minimizes the overall data scan when querying the Online Archive. Additionally, the new storage engine delivers additional benefits in the form of storage optimizations like sorting as well as ongoing rebalancing to deliver consistent performance over time. With this feature, you will experience faster Online Archive querying performance while your overall costs are decreased when querying against the archives. Ability to choose a storage region With the new Online Archives, the users will be able to select the storage region at the time of creating an Online Archive. There will be a feature to choose one of the supported Data Federation regions from the dropdown during the creation process. In addition, we display the closest region so the users can make an informed decision about their storage region. Enhanced metrics With these new enhanced and improved metrics, we are helping customers better understand what data is in their archive such that they can connect to the appropriate endpoint for their use case and have insight into the performance of archival jobs. With these enhanced metrics, users can see a dashboard including the total # of documents in the archive and overall Archive data size (with a tooltip to explain metrics), what rate are archival jobs archiving, Min/Max Date Fields in the archive, and other statistics that are helpful and important for the users to increase the visibility of the archives. Newly created archives Note that only the newly created Online Archives on or after 06/07/2023 will see the performance improvements and enhancements initially. All existing archives created before 06/07/2023 will continue to function as-is (without the new improvements and enhanced metrics). Over the coming year, we will migrate all existing archives created before 06/07/2023 to the new backend storage service. See the documentation for additional information about creating new Online Archives and Enhanced Metrics .

June 13, 2023
Next →

MongoDB and Partners: Building the AI Future, Together

If you’re like me, over the past year you’ve closely watched AI’s developments—and the world’s reactions to them. From infectious excitement about AI’s capabilities, to impatience with its cost and return on investment, every day has been filled with AI twists and turns. It’s been quite the roller coaster. During the ride, from time to time I’ve wondered where AI falls on the Gartner hype cycle, which gives "a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time." Have we hit the "peak of inflated expectations" only to fall into the "trough of disillusionment?" Or is the hype cycle an imperfect guide, as The Economist argues? The reality is that it takes time for any new technology—even transformative ones like AI—to take hold. And every advance, no matter how big, has had its detractors. A famous example is that of Picasso (!), who in 1968 said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” (!!) For our part, MongoDB is convinced that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology that will enhance every future application—a belief that has been reinforced by the incredible work our partners have shared at MongoDB’s 2024 events. Speeding AI development MongoDB is committed to helping organizations of all sizes succeed with AI, and one way we’re doing that is by collaborating with the MongoDB partner ecosystem to create powerful, user-friendly AI development tools and solutions. For example, Fireworks.ai —which is a member of the MongoDB AI Applications Program ecosystem —created an inference solution that hosts gen AI models and supports containerized deployments. This tool makes it easier for developers to build and deploy powerful applications with a range of easy-to-use tools and customization options. They can choose to use state-of-the-art, open-source language, image, and multimodal foundation models off the shelf, or they can customize and fine-tune models to their needs. Jointly, Fireworks.ai and MongoDB provide a solution for developers who want to leverage highly curated and optimized open-source models and combine these with their organization’s own proprietary data—and to do so with unparalleled speed and security. “MongoDB is one of the most sophisticated database providers, and it’s very easy to use,” said Benny Chen , cofounder of Fireworks.ai. "We want developers to be able to use these tools, and we want to work with providers who enable and empower developers." Nomic , another MAAP ecosystem member, also enables developers with best-in-class solutions across the entire unstructured data workflow. Their Embed offering, available through the Nomic API , allows users to vectorize large-scale datasets for use in text, image, and multimodal retrieval applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), using only their web browser. The Nomic-MongoDB solution is a highly efficient, open-weight model that developers can use to visualize the unstructured datasets they store in MongoDB Atlas . These insights help users quickly discover trends and articulate data-driven value propositions. Nomic also supported the recently announced vector quantization in MongoDB Atlas Vector Search , which reduces vector sizes while preserving performance. Last—but hardly least!—there’s our new reference architecture with MAAP partners AWS and Anthropic. Announced at MongoDB.local London , the reference architecture supports building memory-enhanced AI agents, and is designed to streamline complex processes and develop smarter, more responsive applications. For more—including a link to the code on Github— check out the MongoDB Developer Center . Making AI work for anyone and everyone The companies MongoDB partners with aren’t just making gen AI easier for developers—they’re building tools for everyone. For example, Capgemini has invested $2 billion in gen AI and is training 100,000 of its employees in the technology. GenYoda, a solution that helps insurance professionals with their daily work, is a product of this investment. GenYoda leverages MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to analyze large amounts of customer data, like policy statements, premiums, claims history, and health information. Using GenYoda, insurance professionals can quickly analyze underwriters’ reports to make informed decisions, create longitudinal health summaries, and streamline customer interactions to improve contact center efficiency. GenYoda can ingest 100,000 documents in just a few hours and respond to users’ queries in two to three seconds—a metric on par with the most widely used gen AI models. And it produces results: in one example, by using Capgemini’s solution an insurer was able to increase productivity by 15%, add new reports 25% faster (thus speeding decision-making), and reduce the manual effort of searching PDFs, increasing efficiency by 10%. Building the future of AI together So, what’s next? Honestly, I’m as curious as you are. But I’m also incredibly excited. At MongoDB, we’re active participants in the AI revolution, working to embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. The future of gen AI is bright, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together. To learn more about how MongoDB can accelerate your AI journey, explore the MongoDB AI Applications Program .

November 4, 2024