Whether looking to re-skill or to refresh your Big Data skills, these are the best courses around.

The Big Data skills gap is a well documented issue that is facing the market and while vendors seek to bridge the gap with tools and outsourcing, the long term fix is to train and educate people to become Data Scientists or at least more adept with Big Data.

There is no real quick education fix to this but there are plenty of education programs out there that can train you to use Big Data technology like Hadoop.

To help you identify the best courses out there, CBR has compiled a list.

1. Hadoop training

A number of companies provide Hadoop training but one of the best around comes from Cloudera.

The Cloudera University trains data professionals at over 65% of Fortune 100 companies and can offer both online courses and classroom training in over 50 cities around the world.

The company offers training for developers, administrators and data analysts so you can target your specific area.

There is a mixture of four day and three day courses that can provide an introduction to Data Science or HBase training, as well as a number of other areas.

Learning and understanding Hadoop can be a rewarding and useful skill to have, not only will you be able to take more advantage of your Hadoop cluster, but you’ll finally be able to explain to everyone what it is.

2. Big Data University

Run by Big Data enthusiasts with experience in Hadoop, Spark and Data Scientists, the online portal offers a number of courses to help you get to grips with Big Data.

Based around a community that offers additional learning through access to open source communities, academia and companies like IBM, this is a great way to learn through courses and from your peers.

Many of the courses are free and you also have access to an extensive library of resources to help you hit the books from the comfort of your own home.

You can gain hands-on experience through using tools such as Docker and VMware images, all done through the cloud.

3. SAP training

For a more solution based training program then it’s probably wise to turn to one of the companies that has one of the most widely used sets of software.

With its software in many companies, it’s probably useful to know how to use the technology and get some certification.

The company provides training and certification for pretty much all of its widely used software applications.

Although some of the courses will set you back a pretty penny, the E-Academy HCM Management & Administration course costs $8,636, the courses are extensive.

Once paid for, you’ll have access to all the content and learning tools you need for five months to get you certified. Then, once the training is complete you can organise to have an examination. This is extensive training.

4. INFORMS

The Certified Analytics Professional certification is a rigorous general analytics certification that will give you an end-to-end understanding of the analytics process.

You’ll learn how to frame business and analytic problems to acquiring data and methodology, as well as model lifecycle management.

The certification can be sought after by professionals, organisations and for entry level users the associate CAP.

Extensive training and a certification board oversees everything to make sure that only the highest standards are met. Members of the board include people from SAS, Teradata, Gartner, Disney, UPS and a number of top US universities.

5. Revolution Analytics

Revolution R Enterprise Professional certification will help you demonstrate the ability to use the R statistical language for advanced analytics projects.

Held up as one of the most accurate and important Big Data tools, R certification would certainly give you an advantage in the jobs market and in your Big Data work.

You will learn the strategic and practical aspects of analysis Big Data, the theory and methods of advanced analytics and statistical modelling.

In order to pass you must undertake a proctored exam that contains 60 multiple choice questions that need to be answered in 90 minutes.

The advanced element of the certification will require you to learn the critical steps in model selection, prediction, validation and scoring, you’ll also need to learn how to estimate generalised linear models with large data.