“The cloud services companies of all sizes, the cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy.”
- Marc Benioff, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Salesforce.
Over the past few years, Cloud computing is one such area of IT that has created the most hype, interest, and investment. It is possible that the term has different meanings for different users, still, the cloud is a permanent encounter for service providers and end-users, global companies, and businesses of all sizes as well. Eventually, the certification providers are attracted to cloud computing and companies offering cloud-related products such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and VMware.
As per a report by industry analyst IDC or International Data Corporation, the cloud has grown much faster than it was anticipated. It predicts a five-year compound annual growth rate or CAGR of 7.5% by 2023 with spending for cloud services to reach $94.5 billion.
The figures mentioned above show that the cloud has become more crucial to IT and the business at large, demand for cloud computing skills will grow exponentially. If you wish to prove that you have the right knowledge and skills in the competitive job market, cloud certification can prove to be the best option.
In case, you are looking for an extra edge in launching your career or a promotion, taking up the cloud architect training online and getting certified is the best recommendation.
Now let us see what actually cloud architect is before making a jump to its certification.
Who is a Cloud Architect?
When we talk about a career in the cloud, one of the buzzwords that come in is ‘Cloud Architect’. Cloud computing architecture includes components and subcomponents that are required for cloud computing that generally consist of front-end and back-end platforms, a cloud-based delivery, and a network. The design of cloud solutions is based on architectural procedures that have been developed over the years
A Cloud Architect is accountable for the conversion of technical requirements of a project into the architecture and design that will lead to the final product. Besides designing the architecture, a cloud architect is also responsible for bridging the gap between complex business problems and solutions in the cloud.
A cloud architect works with other members of the team like DevOps engineers and developers in order to make sure that the right technology is being built.
Skills Required to get Certified
If becoming a Cloud Architect is in your mind, it is presumed that you have a strong background in cloud computing. A strong technical background is required because cloud computing is all about the technologies that are changing rapidly and are becoming a crucial part of common people in one or the other way.
To become a cloud architect, you should have a firm grip over at least one operating system such as Linux, Windows, Unix, Solaris, Ubuntu or any other OS, and a good knowledge of networking HTTP, TCP/IP. In addition, you need to have a good understanding of programming languages and most importantly a high-level understanding of key security concepts of the cloud.
For becoming a cloud architect, getting certified is a good option. You can go for a vendor-specific certification or vendor-neutral one. In this article, we will read about some top vendor-specific cloud architect certifications you can pursue.
Cloud Architect Certifications
AWS
The top certification offered by Amazon Web Services is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Associate. This certification demonstrates your technical expertise in building and deploying highly available, scalable, cost-efficient, and fault-tolerant systems on the AWS platform.
This certification also validates that you can define a solution by using architectural design principles that are based on customer requirements.
Microsoft Azure
An emerging market leader in cloud solutions, Microsoft Azure, offers Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect. This certification requires your expertise in computing, networking, storage, and security to design cloud solutions that run on Azure.
To achieve the Azure Solutions Architect certification, you need to clear two exams – AZ300 and AZ301. Before taking these exams it is not necessary to pass any Associate level exams. The AZ300 is all about Azure technologies, on the other hand, AZ301 focuses on design.
To get certified, you need to learn to build, designing, deploying, migrating, incorporating, and configuring an Azure infrastructure, determination of workloads requirements, executing those workloads securely on the Azure platform. In addition, you are required to learn how to implement Azure authentication and maintain the security of data and create a design of a business continuity strategy as well.
Google Cloud Platform
Google is the term that has become an inseparable part of our lives. A Professional Cloud Architect is the one who can leverage Google Cloud Technologies for an organization. If you achieve this certification, it means that you have a deep knowledge of Google Cloud Platform and you are able to design, develop, and monitor versatile, secure, highly available, scalable, and dynamic cloud solutions to drive business objectives.
The Google Cloud Certified – Professional Cloud Architect Exam assesses your skills to design and plan architecture of cloud solutions, monitor implementations of cloud architecture, ensure security features and compliance and its reliability, and manage other aspects of the cloud.
Conclusion
AWS is ruling the cloud computing market with more than one million potential customers. It delivers flexible, scalable, and reliable cloud solutions. Some of the companies that rely on AWS are General Netflix, IBM, Plunk, and many more.
Microsoft Azure has become the fastest growing cloud provider for building, deploying, testing, and managing applications and cloud services with Microsoft-managed data-centers. The companies using Microsoft Azure are Apple iCloud, eBay, Adobe, Samsung, Xerox, and many others.
Google Cloud provides cloud computing services on the same infrastructure that Google utilizes for its end-user products internally. Google Cloud customers include PayPal, Twitter, Target, HSBC, Bloomberg, etc.
Now you have come across the fact that none of the three cloud solutions providers lag behind, and are the best in their own ways. You can choose any of them for becoming a cloud architect.
All you need to do is get yourself registered in an online training course and go for the certification you like. Some accredited online training institutes can provide the best training and make sure that you pass the certification exam in the first attempt itself.
