“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

― Mark Twain

With the increase of cloud usage, it is now essential for every IT professional to atleast have a foundational knowledge on cloud computing.

What is cloud computing?

According to AWS

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In much leaner terms, they allow you to rent everything you see in a datacenter in an optimized, redundant and repeatable way.

The increase in cloud usage stems from offering velocity and zero capital expense. Make it more affordable, especially for startups to spin up environments to test and deploy their products.

But how should we, as people who offer technical services, dive in and dig deeper into this kind of offering? There are a lot of resource out their that would allow you to take a leap in learning these technologies. Let me give you some personal insights on how to start with it. (I'll be focusing on AWS for this article :) )

• Learn one cloud service provider at a time

You should choose cloud computing provider to start with. You can check cloud zero's latest list for 2024 https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/cloud-service-providers/

• Create an account

Once you've decided to choose for example AWS, Create an account, this will allow you to utilize the free tiers in creating and testing real life cases.

• Learn the why's of cloud

Start by learning why cloud, it's foundation and use case. For this there's a perfect course created by Andrew Brown thru freecodecamp in youtube --> https://youtu.be/NhDYbskXRgc?si=cD3ER6yZTYMdsQzF

• Dive into the services

The next step is to learn each service and the benefits of integrating these resources into your infrastructure. Check out Andrew Brown's Complete Bootcamp Course --> https://youtu.be/zA8guDqfv40?si=9fuBQ2STWGGN-2TH

This will not only give you a headstart, but also a portfolio that you can showcase for your cloud career.

• Learn Infrastructure as code

This technique not only gives you another technology to showcase with, but also reinforces your knowledge of services and resource integration (this is where I gained deep knowledge of AWS VPC's)

• Take Certification

Taking up certification will challenge your knowledge and show you things that you need attention on. It will also give you practical tips on best practices that you can use once you need to work on cloud tech. Here's the complete certification path specific to your role. https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs/AWS_certification_paths.pdf

I hope this steps would allow you to take the first step in your cloud journey. There's a lot of resources out there, paid or free. You just need to discover those resources and study.

Cheers!