There has been a massive increase in overall cloud consumption. Enterprise and SMB’s are increasingly moving their workload to the public cloud. It’s no longer a question of if but when you move your critical business workloads to the cloud. Let’s understand why it makes sense to level up your understanding of the cloud and get a Cloud certification.
The overall spend on cloud is expected to touch USD 216B by 2022, according to Statista. The bulk of this spends results from continuous cloud adoption by almost every industry. The clamor is not just about workload migration, whether it is high tech, finance, health care, public sector, or education. There is an increasing trend of having more applications that are custom-built for the cloud. In addition, the application development landscape is changing rapidly, with more apps written to run in containers. If you are a budding Cloud enthusiast or a seasoned veteran in IT, getting a Cloud certification makes sense, especially if you try to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
“Through 2022, insufficient cloud IaaS skills will delay half of enterprise IT organizations’ migration to the cloud by two years or more. Today’s cloud migration strategies tend more toward “lift-and-shift” than toward modernization or refactoring. However, lift-and-shift projects do not develop native-cloud skills. This is creating a market where service providers cannot train and certify people quickly enough to satisfy the need for skilled cloud professionals.”
–Gartner ( January 2020 )
Table of Contents
1. Demand for Cloud Professionals
Businesses are moving to the cloud unabatedly. The retail industry has already shattered the fundamental business model of running brick and mortar shops. With a behemoth known as Amazon, everyone else has no option but to take up the cloud approach. Just like Amazon, Netflix disrupted the entrainment industry. As a result, Disney, HBO, and everyone else is following suit. This tectonic shift has resulted in businesses taking a long hard look at their fundamental business constructs. This realignment has led to an unabashed demand for cloud professionals. Unfortunately, there is more demand than supply these career websites; Monster found in a CIO Survey that 65% said hiring challenges hurt the industry.
2. Better Earnings
Engineers with a Cloud certification, on average, get paid 10% more than the other top IT skill with similar experience. Additionally, AWS experienced, and certified engineers tend to attract a better pay scale among various public clouds than others. Top cloud positions as per zip recruiter consistently are benchmarked at more than 150 K USD annual salary. Reports at TechTarget describe one of the top two reasons to demand better compensation: “how many cloud certifications one has”?
3. Improve Credibility
To go through the process of preparing and testing highlights that you are a serious candidate. You take your trade seriously and are proactive in ensuring you have the right skills certified by independent third-party bodies. It is a fact that given everything else being equal, an employer will hire certified rather than someone who is not. As a result, employers feel confident that they can entrust you with their critical projects, and you have obtained the minimum criteria to professionally execute your job responsibilities.
4. Demonstrate Specialization
Let’s take an example of Azure. Azure, since its launch in 2010, has added hundreds of services in its portfolio. Almost every conceivable cloud service is available in its catalog. Azure also covers more regions than any other cloud provider. With such a gamut of services, it pays to be specialized. If you pick a niche and specialize in it, you will be considered much more valuable to a prospective employer. Things have changed over the years, gone are the days where you learn a skill for life. The dynamic business environment demands an equally adept response. People who are willing to learn new skills are the ones that will thrive. In fact, as per IDC, by 2021, almost 40% of the jobs will be cloud-based.
5. In-Demand Technologies
The top public cloud service providers and revenue earners are AWS, Azure, and Google. Each vendor has its certification paths, which leads to various competency levels. If you are starting, then you can consider the list at CIO.com. Google tops the ten most valuable certifications list as can be seen CIO.com. Additionally, a Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect is grossing the highest average salary. Each public cloud provider has its categorization of certifications. For example, Azure classifies certifications differently under Fundamental, Role-based, and Additional. You can click here to look up the details. AWS clubs its certifications under Professional, Associate, Foundation, and Speciality.
Time to market is a crucial parameter for most organizations. It’s of paramount importance for them to keep this parameter as low as possible. It is, therefore, crucial to run DevOps in the Cloud helps to reduce the time to the market. This is where Microsoft Azure DevOps Expert Certification comes in ( now known as Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert )
Wrapping up
We will continue to see more innovative services launched in the cloud. With AI and Machine Learning becoming mainstream in a few years, expect more investments in this space. Digitization and IoT are also themes that rely on a robust network of services delivered by the cloud industry.
Make sure you are ready and get a Cloud certification! Equip yourself with the necessary knowledge to tap into this opportunity. Why not read how to move your SMB to the Public Cloud to see the challenges you may face as a future Cloud architect.
