Five Reasons Why Cloud Architects Should Attain AWS Certification NOW!

This blog has been updated on 30 May 2018.

1. It is one of the only REAL Certifications in the market

There are a lot of public cloud providers in the market, especially at the infrastructure level. AWS is the undoubted market leader and by a huge margin. The other popular ones are Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Rackspace, HP Cloud, VMware Cloud, etc. But other than AWS and Azure, none of these cloud providers have a comprehensive certification portfolio. There are a lot of other vendor-neutral certificates, but they test very basic skills and do not prove anything towards one’s Cloud architecting skills. So they are mostly useless, with very few people asking for those certifications.

Thus AWS certification is one of the only REAL certifications you can attain until other cloud vendors come up with their own certifications. You can watch our video explaining the AWS certifications here.

(Since this blog, Microsoft Azure has come up with its very comprehensive certifications. Read more about it here).

2. Companies are demanding their consultants to be AWS Certified

Companies are also realizing the point “1” mentioned above. Our consulting team and any AWS consulting team will readily agree that their client companies are now requiring all the consultants to be AWS Certified. Since the launch of AWS certification client companies are increasingly requiring consultants to be AWS certified along with the knowledge they have. AWS certification has truly been a catalyst that helped companies identify talent more readily and helped the ecosystem.

There are a lot of so-called Cloud experts our there and many of them are snake oil salesman (will post shortly an article “5 Signs that a Cloud Consultant is a Snake Oil Salesman”). Companies are likely to trust individuals with AWS Certification, so if you are in Cloud consulting space, you will require this certification sooner rather than later.

3. Questions are very reasonable and relevant

There are a lot of exams filled with irrelevant jargon, so you have to read the books even though you have been working in that area for a long time. Luckily this certification is NOT one of those. If you have hands-on experience with AWS and have been architecting on AWS, you will find the questions very relevant. Reading before the exam and testing your skills with sample questions always helps, but you will not have to remember a lot of unnecessary acronyms for this test. I have provided some sample questions here.

4. Currently, there are lesser services to learn

I love the rate at which AWS innovates, but it is also quite taxing. They launch a new service almost every month and it’s hard to keep up. Honestly, I have not had a chance to do any hands-on with newer services like the Amazon SageMaker. Thankfully the newer services like Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, etc. are still missing from the certification, possibly because they are newer services and AWS acknowledges that not everyone has had time to master these services. But it’s almost a surety that they will add these services in the next update to the certification questions. So you can take the exam now, or later you will have to master a lot more services to clear this same certification. Taking this sooner will need you to learn fewer services. So do it now.

5. It is the best paying certification out there

According to Forbes magazine article, AWS certification is the highest paying certification in the market. AWS Certified Solutions Architects – Associate certification pays an average salary of $121,292 in USA. Although I could not find relevant articles for other countries, it is certainly one of the top paying certifications worldwide.

Bonus: There are more levels coming

As clearing this Associate level is a pre-requisite for higher-level certifications, this is the right time to clear the Associate level and be ready for the next certifications. It will be a pain to clear two or three certifications, so its better you clear this one NOW!

If you want to read more about preparing for AWS certification, please read my previous blog post here.

Thus the time to clear AWS Solutions Architect Certification is NOW!!!